The “Tide Pod Challenge” as it was called, has quickly been eclipsed by another stupid trend called the “condom snorting challenge” which is every bit as dumb as it sounds.Ashley Welch reports at CBS News:
“Condom snorting challenge”: Experts warn of dangerous trend among teensA dangerous trend among teens is causing concern among the medical community. The “condom snorting challenge” is exactly what it sounds like: Teens are taking to the internet to post videos of themselves snorting a condom up one nostril and inhaling until it — hopefully — re-emerges into the mouth.The potentially life-threatening practice dates back a few years but has resurfaced in recent days.Unsurprisingly, doctors and school officials are speaking out against the dangerous party trick and urging teens not to partake.The biggest health risk the challenge poses, experts say, is that it’s a choking hazard.”You are literally putting something down your nose, which connects to your mouth, which connects to your trachea,” Dr. Ammar Ali, an emergency room physician at Beaumont Health, told CBS Detroit. “I mean, you are risking choking on it.”In addition to choking, Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, says inhalation of a condom can lead to infection — and it could even get stuck.
This short video from FOX News shows people carrying out the act:
Remember a few weeks ago when people on the left were arguing for lowering the voting age? Good times.
These trends are driven in part by social media and the desire for attention. Professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has just written a new column on the subject for USA Today:
Social media firms want us addicted to approval. So much for WiFi making us smarter.A rather profound tweet by a Twitter user called The Stoic Emperor reads:
Almost all Americans own a smartphone or a computer.Each device contains the library of Alexandria.The sum total of all world knowledge.You can learn anything. Why don’t you?Too busy tracking social status.Too enthralled by imagery your evolution can’t resist.
Sadly, this seems about right. Years ago I wrote about how the arrival of pervasive WiFi and smart devices meant that human knowledge was available like never before:
“I’m writing this in a bar right now, and I have most of human knowledge at my fingertips. Okay, it’s not really a bar. It’s a campus pizza place, albeit one with 27 kinds of beer on tap, a nice patio and — most importantly — a free 802.11b ‘Wi-Fi’ wireless Internet hookup. With that, and Google, there’s not much that I can’t find out. If I’m curious about the Hephthalite huns or the rocket equation or how much money Fritz Hollings has gotten from the entertainment industry, I can have it in less time than it takes the barmaid to draw me a beer.“
That was still a novelty back in 2003. Now it’s a commonplace — but people don’t seem to have gotten significantly smarter or better-informed. And social media, designed to exploit our evolutionary weaknesses, probably do play a role.
One has to wonder what “challenges” the internet holds in store for the future.
Featured image via YouTube.
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