There’s a new viral challenge on the internet and it involves babies…and cheese slices.
No, it’s not like the ‘Cheerio Challenge‘, which saw parents stacking the ring-shaped cereal in towers on their sleeping baby’s face. The #CheeseChallenge is literally adults throwing cheese slices at a wide-awake infant.
The point of the exercise is to make the cheese stick to the child’s face – and to amuse people who have a very low threshold for amusement. It began when Twitter user @UncleHxlmes uploaded a video, with the caption, “just cheesed my lil brother”. The video was deleted after it attracted 258,000 retweets and 758,000 likes.
With viewing and reach statistics like those, the video was bound to be copied and become the latest viral challenge – and that’s exactly what’s happened on social media.
In each video, when a baby is ‘hit’ with a cheese slice, the results are predictable. The babies are shocked and bemused, as anyone would be, at an object in their face, taking them by surprise and momentarily blocking their view.
The trend soon extended to involve older children, too.
As one would expect, there’s been significant backlash to the challenge, because not everyone finds entertainment at the expense of children amusing.
The most notable criticism came from actor, model and mum-of-two Chrissy Teigen, who tweeted, “I love a prank as much as anybody but I cannot get myself to throw cheese at my adorable, unsuspecting baby who has all the hope and trust in the world in me.”
Hopefully, the backlash will mean the viral trend will become, ahem, unstuck very soon.
What do you think of the #cheesechallenge? Tell us in the comments below.
Top Comments
100% would do it if my kids didn't eat cheese like it was going out of fashion I frankly can not spare the slices. BUT I would not film it. Purely for my own enjoyment. I confess I also sometimes throw marshmellows at my 6 year old. I expect that will come up in his therapy sessions for years to come
OK - now I'm watching out for marshmellow throwing to go viral
Its particularly funny because they leave marshmellow powder. It usually leads to quite the sticky messy carry on at our house.
Personally, I don't really like kids or babies, but even I find this a little disturbing. It's up there with people who film themselves teasing animals for fun. What's funny about tormenting a creature too small or stupid to defend itself?
Tormenting? Come on! I throw marshmellows at my 6 year old sometimes. Hardly an act of torment
It's the act of filming that's especially weird, though I really don't see the funny side of intentionally and repeatedly teasing a defenseless thing or person - really is no different to teasing an animal. Riddle me this: how would you react if a stranger did this to your kid?
Its not a stranger though so its irrelevant.
So, OK for you to tease your kids, but not OK for a stranger to do it? If the answer is in the affirmative, it's definitely relevant. The "challenge" described in this article is being uploaded and shared with strangers - parents are inviting strangers to delight in video footage of their kids being teased.