Giraffes: Another Pointless Challenge
Staff Writer
3:00 a.m., the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors, your parents, are there for breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread and cheese. What is the first thing you open?
For the past few weeks, many Facebook users have been trying to solve this riddle and some have been unsuccessful. If the person answering the riddle gives the incorrect answer, they must change their profile picture into a giraffe for the next two days.
Many took part in the “Great Giraffe Challenge,” which swept through social media. This is one of many challenges that teenagers have followed throughout the past couple years, which range from hilarity, like the “Chubby Bunny Challenge,” to more harmful tasks such as the “Cinnamon Challenge.”
Teenagers tend to jump onto the bandwagon, despite there being no reason to. Teens know that these challenges are foolish, uncalled for and potentially dangerous, and yet we still manage to popularize them. Upon answering the riddle, no one was forced to change their picture into a giraffe. Nobody needs to know how many marshmallows they can stuff into their mouths or how much cinnamon they can consume before eventually coughing up a cloud of brown. The mouth can only fit so many marshmallows, which may lead to choking or triggering of the gag reflex. Cinnamon is a spice that dries the mouth and taking in a large amount is a safety hazard which can lead to choking, throat irritation or even lung damage.
Although all these safety hazards are well known, teenagers still manage to conjure up ridiculous challenges for others to complete. Whether it be as simple as the “Giraffe Challenge” or as life threatening as the “Cinnamon Challenge,” perhaps due to our reckless teenage minds, we still tend to follow these ridiculous trends.