What the 'Momo Challenge' says about us and the Internet

It’s the stuff nightmares are made of.

The image, depicting a distorted human face, with bulging eyes, long black hair, a deformed nose and a mouth seemingly crossed between a bird beak and a human’s, is something that will stick with a person long after they’ve seen it. On face value, Momo and its challenge were a perfect internet panic storm geared to alarm parents.

The Momo Challenge has since been dubbed a hoax, but it initial scare perfectly illustrates how the collective id of the internet can take something and run with it. For those who are unaware, the Momo Challenge allegedly came about after a Whatsapp user using the nickname Momo would contact other users, primarily children and teens, to undertake a series of self harm challenges. The idea then spread like wildfire across Facebook and other social media platforms, despite no one reporting actual instances where involving harm. Panic spread, with police departments and school districts issuing statements about the challenge throughout the end of 2018 and into 2019.

It’s the perfect internet urban legend. The base fear involved is the concern about what a child is doing online and who is contacting them, focusing on the fear there’s no shortage of weirdos and perverts wanting to harm a child. It plays on other harmful challenges that have spread throughout social media, like the Cinnamon Challenge and the Tide Pod Challenge that teens have participated in. And then, there’s the nightmare fuel of an image that is tied to the Momo Challenge.

The the photo included with the alleged Momo Challenge is a sculpture based on a yokai, a traditional Japanese spirit. There are hundreds of yokai in Japanese folklore and are associated with other supernatural phenomena and urban legends. Yokai is a broad term that can describe ghosts, as well as transformed animals or people and monsters. Pictures of the sculpture, titled “Mother Bird” were posted online in 2016 when it was publicly displayed. The sculpture has since been destroyed after the materials used in its creation had rotted away.

The Momo Challenge is interesting because it also it shows how fear overcomes rational thought online. It illustrates why so-called fake news, things like how Barack Obama is really from Kenya or conspiracies about chem trails being sprayed on American cities for nefarious reasons, proliferate and spread. Emotion is the fuel of the internet.

Another problem is it’s not real until it is. Someone could decide to make the Momo Challenge a real thing and change the entire tone of situation. After all, Slender Man, an internet boogie man created on a chat forum, was the inspiration for a very real attack.

Two 12-year-old girls in Wisconsin lured a friend into the woods and stabbed her 19 times in an attempt to impress Slender Man. The girl survived and the two who attacked her were sent to mental institutions.

Keeping an eye on what a child does online is an important thing to keep in mind regardless of a fear-invoking incident, real or hoaxed. Parents should routinely talk with their children about what’s online and what their children experience through online games, Facebook, YouTube or whatever else their looking at.

However, that doesn’t mean every viral report about something happening online should be taken at face value either. Having grown up as the Internet has evolved, the most important thing I’ve learned is to research an incident as throughly as possible before making a determination about its validity.

After all, while there is a lot to be concerned about on the Internet, there’s also a lot to treat like any bad dream; just wake up and forget about it.

 

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