Dean
People just love doing stupid things. Last year it was eating Tide Pods, and this year it’s the “Bird Box Challenge,” a social-media stunt based on the Netflix movie of the same name in which people don blindfolds like Sandra Bullock does in the film. The obvious problem here is that people rendering themselves blind could conceivably hurt themselves and others in the process.
Netflix is pleading with people not to try this challenge. The company tweeted on Wednesday, “PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE.”
Can’t believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE. We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes.
— Netflix US (@netflix) January 2, 2019
The tweet continued, “We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes.”
In the movie, characters must cover their eyes with blindfolds because of monsters that want to show them their worst nightmares, causing them to immediately commit suicide. A good portion of the movie shows Bullock and the two kids she’s taking care of, Boy and Girl (she was apparently too busy not looking at stuff to give them actual names until the end of the movie), walking around and even rowing a boat on a river while blindfolded.
Soon after the release of the film in December, people started taking videos of themselves running around blindfolded and posting them to social media with the hashtag #BirdBoxChallenge.
Many of the videos went viral, like one of two women doing the challenge for 24 hours, which got almost 2 million views on YouTube. The women do fall down on a moving walkway at one point in the video.
Here are a few more of the #BirdBoxChallenge videos.
Another video shows a blindfolded man leading a blindfolded toddler directly into a wall. Harsh.
Hopefully this trend will die down quickly, without too many idiots getting injured or hurting anyone else. It’s not even like the Ice Bucket Challenge, which was for a good cause and didn’t hurt anyone, it’s just dumb and dangerous.
h/t: Daily Beast
