February 12, 2025
Strange Social Media Challenges That Got Out of Hand

Strange Social Media Challenges That Got Out of Hand

“I triple-dog dare you,” in A Christmas Story, shows a tradition of dares and challenges. Unfortunately, some social media challenges have gotten out of hand.

We’ve all been dared to do things that scare us, there have been shows about such events, giving those of us watching a front-row seat to the challenge and the stakes. Unfortunately, some strange social media challenges have gotten out of hand. Some haven’t been anything more than harmless fun, but not these challenges, which were taken just a little too far.

The Hot Pepper Challenge

This challenge sounds safe enough, as most of us enjoy spicy food from time to time. Hot pepper and hot wing challenges have been around at various restaurants and bars for a long time without too many issues. Unfortunately, when people take this challenge to their homes, things can get out of hand. If you drink hot sauce or eat some of the hottest peppers without anything to calm the pepper, you could end up with seizures, anaphylactic shock, thunderclap headaches, or a hole in your esophagus.

Nyquill Chicken

This is a strange social media challenge that should give you pause. Simply preparing for the challenge can be dangerous. Boiling liquid medication removes the excess water, which increases the intensity of the medicine. While Nyquill isn’t harmful in its recommended doses, if you eat a chicken boiled in it, you could be at risk of an overdose of the active ingredients in the medicine, which are acetaminophen, dextromethorphan, and doxylamine. In fact, breathing the fumes from cooking the chicken in Nyquill can be dangerous.

Bird Box Challenge

This challenge could actually teach participants to be a little more empathetic toward the blind, but it can also be a dangerous challenge. It’s based on the film “Bird Box,” and participants are expected to navigate the world around them while wearing blindfolds. This is not a challenge you want to participate in without some help from other people. Imagine walking into traffic because you’re wearing a blindfold. The results can be hard to predict, but taking on this challenge without some help can have extremely dangerous results.

Blackout Challenge

This is one of the strange social media challenges that shouldn’t exist because it can go horribly wrong in many ways. The idea is to choke yourself or someone else until they blackout. This doesn’t even sound harmless, because it’s not. By doing this, you can cause irreparable damage to yourself or the other person. If you choke while standing, you could hit your head on something on the way down. There’s no logical reason for anyone to have ever come up with such a terrible challenge, but this is certainly one to be avoided.

Blue Whale Challenge

This challenge should be a worrying warning to any parent of children using social media. The challenge lasts for 50 days, which makes it hard to track and understand. The idea is to have participants complete a series of tasks one each day, with each task becoming increasingly degrading while involving some form of self-harm. On the final day, those who actually complete this challenge have their literal final day. The last day is when participants are instructed to kill themselves, which is absolutely horrific.

Swatting

Some of these strange social media challenges highlight just how depraved the world has gotten. Swatting is potentially harmful to other people, unlike most challenges where you inflict harm on yourself. In this challenge, a participant reports a dangerous situation at an unsuspecting target’s location. When the SWAT team arrives, things can go horribly wrong, especially if the person attempts to protect themselves with a weapon. At the very least, this leaves the victim traumatized from the experience, which is a huge waste of time and resources, especially for the SWAT team.

Tide PODS

By now, this challenge should be pretty much dead, but that doesn’t stop it from showing up again and becoming a problem. This is a problematic challenge among kids who see the brightly colored Tide PODS and think they want to eat them. Although most kids understand these items are laundry detergent and could succumb to peer pressure. Hopefully, this dangerous challenge will not come back to light. It was one of the most dangerous on the internet, mostly because many kids participated in it.

Some of the most radical and strange social media challenges can have harmful ends. Before engaging in one of these challenges, its important to think about what’s being asked and the dangers associated with those activities.