Over the years we've seen a lot of weird and ridiculous challenges on the internet, and by now it seems like you can get people on social media to do absolutely anything, no matter how stupid, dangerous or morally reprehensible, just by calling it a "challenge."
It started off innocently enough at first, with the Ice Bucket challenge - when people emptied cold water over themselves to raise money and awareness for motor neuron disease. But then things got more and more stupid. After that, we had the cinnamon challenge, the fire challenge, the corn drill challenge, and many others. The nadir of them all has got to be the infamous Tide Pod challenge, which sent dozens of people to the hospital when they were challenged to ingest laundry detergent.
But now we've possibly found an even more annoying challenge: the flaunt your wealth challenge, in which participants on social media are supposed to stage a picture to make it look like they've stumbled and fallen out of a luxury car, and thereby spilt a number of opulent and expensive designer items out onto the sidewalk. When Instagram influencers were taking it seriously, many others were outraged by their perceived materialism and vapidity. However, now more than a few folks have taken to Instagram to post a few examples of their own, and now the majority of entries are obviously lampooning the fad. Scroll down to check out our favourites:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.The origins of the trend are relatively obscure. It appears to have stemmed from a viral incident in Russia, after a rich Instagram influencer posted a picture of themselves lying spreadeagled at the foot of a flight of stairs, with a number of possessions scattered haphazardly over the floor. From there, the practice migrated to the Chinese social network Weibo, where it escalated to images of wealthy Chinese celebrities or influencers staging pictures to look like they had fallen out of their cars and dropped their shopping. Indeed, the hashtag now boasts more than 2 billion views on Weibo.
However, social media users didn't mince words when it came to criticising the challenge. On Twitter, one person wrote: "WTF is this nonsense? Sums up everything wrong with this morally bankrupt world. Gotta laugh at people saying it'll catch on in America; it's been going on in America for YEARS. [sic]" while another person commented: "I like it when people #flauntyourwealth by donating to worthy causes. Not take pictures of themselves falling out of stupid expensive cars with other absurd items about."
If you ask me, the only challenging thing about this trend is that you'd have to be mentally challenged to take it seriously. Still, the jokey ones are pretty funny, so maybe it has done some good after all.
