Mannequin challenge takes over social media
Social media trends have been gaining popularity through their ridiculousness, like the Harlem Shake where one person is dancing crazily and when the beat from the music drops, everyone joins in, or from raising money for charity, like the ALS Ice Bucket challenge in 2014 where people would get nominated and would have to dump a bucket of ice water on them to mimic what its like to have Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The mannequin challenge is one of these recent social media trends that has taken over. The mannequin challenge is where everyone stands frozen in place in elaborate and sometimes difficult positions, while a person is holding a camera and walks around to capture all the details, while “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd plays in the background. The challenge was supposedly started back in October 2016, by students in Jacksonville, FL.
Some people have figured out that doing this in large groups with friends is the best way to go about doing the challenge.
“We did the challenge in Doug Long’s human anatomy class. He asked what it was and thought it sounded like a fun thing to do. And it was fun, but it was hard not to blink. As a class, we decided to do it and we had skeletons in the classroom so we used that to our advantage. I had to act like I was winding up to smack a skeletons butt. It was a lot of fun,” junior Lily Mohr said.
These social media trends can also be short lived with their popularity because teenagers only participate once or twice and eventually the challenge will go out of style.
“Compared with other trends, like the running man or dabbing, they all have similar moves, but not all of them require the participation of a persons body. I think that the popularity of the trends is definitely with the music that is played during the challenge,” junior Samantha Lee said.
The reason for the popularity of the mannequin challenge is the unique and elaborate poses that are done in the video.
Mohr said, “Some people are really creative with their videos so I think that’s cool. Plus it’s pretty easy to do yourself and lots of people have ideas of what they want to do if they were in the challenge.”
Major celebrities have joined in on the fun, like Hillary Clinton, the SNL cast and Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna who did it while she was in labor.
“It’s an interesting concept and I hope that it’s stays with us for a little while longer,” Lee said.
Hannah Larson is a junior at Stillwater Area High School. She is a photography editor for the Pony Express Newspaper. She loves reading, writing and taking...
