Imlisanen Jamir
Online challenges were once the embodiment of what social media was meant to be: a place to for swap ideas; a means of camaraderie; a way to make the world more open and connected. The preferred axiom concerning the internet nowadays is that it separates us into warring tribes and makes everything terrible. This simply wasn’t true back then, or at least it didn’t seem to be.
In the early 2010s—the golden age of challenges—anybody could participate in an online trend, and that would only make the entire fad better. Today, you can visualize how this would all play out. A right-wing pundit would make the challenge a way to “own the libs,” and then the libs would do the challenge, too, so as to make it both heavy-handed and smug. Then some dreadful politician or bureaucrat would post a video, setting off a war on the web.
If the viral challenge served to bring us all collectively—if it stood for online comity and fun—then we ought to recognize that it’s never, ever coming back. The past years have dumped a bucket of ice-cold water on the premise.
One needn’t fault politics alone for the loss of this cultural trend. The challenge could also be a casualty of our fresh self-consciousness online, and our more developed qualms of appearing unintelligent. Back then embarrassment was not a powerful force in 2012, and “cringe culture” on the internet was still brand-new. But even if cringe killed viral challenges, it’s just not the same—it’s a hot or talented or famous person’s game now. New “challenges” do emerge on the internet every week, but they’re not the kind that brings people together.
In the early to mid-2010s, when viral challenges had their run, nearly all people were still using a social-media platform that was plainly intended to connect them to people they knew in real life—from work, from school, from hanging around town. There was worry about political spite on the platform then, too, but people did use it like a town square or a family-meeting place.
Looking back on the era of transcendent challenges, we’re exploring a tome and space when filming yourself dancing in socks in a mall is all about. But those challenges were also about being old, or being interesting, or being normal. They were about being anybody! With the Mannequin Challenge, we all froze, but time didn’t stop. Now we’re on the other side: Anybody can hold a pose, or pour water on their head, or do a silly dance with friends, but everybody will never do those things again.
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