In the cupboard I still had a beautiful hand-painted bowl. I took a hammer from the shed. Take a deep breath and reflect on my plan for a moment. Was it really that smart to wrap an heirloom in a tea towel and keep whacking it until all you had left was grit? And was it wise to then take a handful of grit and my debit card, divide the porcelain powder into a few neat lines and sniff them one by one? Probably, I reasoned. They are rock hard on TikTok. Of course I had seen the videos of people who ended up in the hospital this way, but it was participating in the porcelain challenge or be an outcast forever.
Yet the dish now just sits on my desk, pristine and filled with scraped carrots. Not because I won the battle against peer pressure, but because the challenge in question doesn’t exist. You probably already understood that, after all, you are not that gullible, but there are a lot of people who get heart palpitations just from the word ‘challenge’. So what exactly does it mean? Even if you kill them. Something pernicious on social media in any case, spread in a language they don’t speak and in places they don’t know their way around. So there is plenty of room to project their prejudices and fears onto it.
The porcelain challenge was launched last week fictional by a guy on TikTok who was curious how fast one would stand on his hind legs. “Do you think we can flip the boomers over a fake TikTok challenge?” he asked his followers in a conspiratorial tone. They have been doing their best ever since. In films they tell about the lung problems they have been dealing with since sniffing crockery, or that they lost their reading skills as a result. Others parody the worries about our unhinged youth. They don’t have to look far for inspiration, as the internet is bursting with sensational news stories about dangerous challenges.
And yet chicken fillets are not cooked en masse in a medicine what makes you sleepy. No, school buildings are not everywhere on fire because of the penny challenge (something with a coin and a socket). Also the Momo Challenge is not real, though he is dredged every few years to terrify parents of young children in a fresh new guise. Through Subway for example, who posted the shocking news under the heading ‘Striking’: ‘A face painted man by the name of Jonathan Galindo is said to be the new face of the infamous and dangerous Momo challenge. This online challenge would even encourage young people to commit suicide.’ Further on, the source is revealed: ‘A concerned family from Urk, who wishes to remain anonymous, pointed to the rumor that the Momo challenge is spreading rapidly via Instagram.’
Sometimes the panic is justified, even though some died in the the nineties teenagers by what is now called the choking challenge and viral is usually a big word. But more often, when you go back to the source, it turns out to be a joke gone wrong, a stupid stunt by one idiot or pure scaremongering. But label it ‘challenge’, blow it up to horrifying proportions, pump it around in the form of clickable heads and it spreads like an oil slick. You could almost give someone ideas.
Do not perform this dangerous act that you had never heard of until recently. Guys, please don’t mess with these three flammable substances in the following proportions. And here’s another handy list of five stupid things you Really. Never. Must. To do.