Challenges

Every once in a while I like to take on an old word with a new meaning and today is one of those days. I Googled the word challenges looking for a quick definition and right away I came across You Tube’s Top Ten Challenges to do at home when you are bored. So I guess I’m going figure everyone already knows the traditional definitions for challenges (as a verb or noun) and get right to the new social media meaning. The meaning I’m referring to here is the challenge part of things like the cinnamon challenge and even more dangerous the more recent fire challenge. The cinnamon challenge had kids swallowing (and sometimes aspirating) mouths full of cinnamon, and the fire challenge has kids setting themselves (their bellies anyway) on fire and posting a video of the whole experience online. The public posting is a big part of these challenges because I guess kids want to ‘share’ with their friends how harebrained they are too. They should add the resulting ER bill and following pain, suffering, and scarring as part of the credits at the end of the video. Perhaps the popularity of shows and movies like Jack Ass or reports like the Darwin Awards have contributed to this new media category of so called ‘challenges’ I don’t know, but the more I see, hear, and read about them the more I dislike this new meaning to the word challenges.