Ahhh, the Internet. There’s always some new trend taking over our feeds and trending on Twitter, am I right?
The ice bucket challenge, the Harlem shake, planking… all classic Internet stunts. So what’s the next craze taking over hashtags these days? Let me tell you. It’s the #mannequinchallenge and it’s probably already at a high school near you.
The Mannequin Challenge is quite simple. Everyone freezes and someone walks through with a video camera documenting the frozen action. It’s kind of stupid in theory. OK, it’s really stupid in theory. But it has unleashed some serious creativity, and for that, I must give it credit.
Many of these videos are set to the song “Black Beatles” by the duo Rae Sremmurd. If you haven’t watched the music video for this song, one of the members is trying to bring back the Nellie Band-Aid. Except instead of awkwardly wearing it on his cheek, he wears it vertically over part of his lip. Herpes maybe?
I’d post the music video, but he’s got a bit of a potty mouth, so I had to find a clean version:
So where did the Mannequin Challenge come from? Of course it started in Florida. You know it did. I would expect nothing less.
The challenge apparently started at an Edward H. White High School in Jacksonville, and if you watch their original video it looks as though they are telling a story or sending some kind of message about high school life. Or maybe that’s just me being deep and there’s no deliberate context to it at all whatsoever.
Here’s where it all began:Since its late-October debut, the trend has spread like wildfire. Superstars, politicians and everyone in between are putting their personal spin on the trend. Just search #MannequinChallenge on Twitter and your feed will be inundated with videos. Some are silly and some are using the trend as a way to send a powerful message. Here are a few examples:Of course, I made FLORIDA TODAY jump on this train too. You can see that at the top of this column. Now that newspaper staffs are doing it, it’s probably not cool anymore, right?!
So try it for yourself, or don’t. It’s fun, it’s weird and if you have teenagers, they’ve probably beat you to it.
