#KiKiChallenge: Hugely Dangerous, Yet Scarily Popular

Kiki Dance Challenge
Image source: aawsat

 

The online world has undoubtedly seen it all. From the insensitive challenges to others that actually helped build awareness and effect change.

This time around, the online community is falling prey to yet another insane challenge that is injuring and risking the lives of young people globally, the ‘KiKi Challenge’ or ‘In My Feeling Challenge’.

The rapid spread of this insanity has got the police departments of Maharashtra, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh taking steps including sustained posts on their social media handles. Reproduced here (in the best of reader safety) are some of these official posts from the Police departments:

As a part of this dance challenge, people are seen stepping out of a moving car and dancing to rapper Drake’s song “In My Feelings”. While performing the dance, people have been seen hit by poles, a car and often falling off the car, hurting themselves. 

Fuelling this insanity are a handful of celebrities (with millions of followers) trying the challenge and posting their videos on social media and in the process actually endorsing trial and possible accident.

For the record, this dangerous dance challenge has already being banned in Spain, Egypt and the UAE.

This is all about getting noticed and getting carried away by a trend says Pune in this chat with Pune365. 

Sudhanshu Ramteke, Stand-up Comedian: Frankly, people have taken more weird challenges in the past. Eating tide pods, snorting condoms, racing between friends and what not. So people keep doing crazy things for no reason.

This has just got blown out of proportion because someone is obviously benefiting from this hype. Yeah they hurt themselves even during the ice bucket challenge which was for a good cause.  Hundreds of videos of people getting hurt in that case too. So I guess people keep finding ways to do dumb stuff, only this time they have someone to blame.

But yes, pushing the limits of personal safety to get social validation is ridiculous. This trend is dangerous and that’s something to be worried about.

Pallavi Manik, M.Com Student: The internet is hit by many challenges at various points of time. However, often the main purpose and objective of the challenge is lost.

Here also Drake didn’t intend to come up with his challenge where people do dangerous things risking their and other people’s lives. It was others who added to it and made their own version that went viral.

People need to understand that not everything is to be taken as a challenge and more so, such stunts which have no purpose at all. 

Rishi Singh, a higher secondary student: The trend is definitely famous among people of our age.

Three of my friends have followed the music video and try to copy the act done by some Indian celebrities too. But they do not know where to put a stop. The celebrities take all kinds of precautions and then perform the ‘stunt’.

They weren’t cautious enough and one of them landed up hurting himself while he tried stepping off a motorbike to make it even more dangerous. I personally do not want to attempt such stupidity.

Kanika Suri, a psychology student: It is the urge to be in the spotlight and post everything on their social media handles. Often people perform challenges without even knowing why they are doing it.

People addicted to social media and obsessed about everything on it are often lured to such ridiculous challenges. It is good that the police departments in many states have taken cognizance to stop this from spreading like the lethal Blue Whale game.

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Loveleen Kaur