Sebastian Durfee, a 23-year-old TikToker and actor, aimed to prove that any scary-seeming trend could go viral when earlier this month he led a campaign to make a fictional "porcelain challenge" go viral.ĭurfee made a TikTok last weekend telling his followers about an idea - a fake challenge where people would snort blended-up porcelain - and urged them to "troll the boomers" by making videos warning about the craze, pretending it was real. Panics over social media trends have become so common that they have begun to inspire their own parodies. Over the last few years, a wave of fake and flimsy trends have turned into fodder for moral panics: "Slap a Teacher," the Momo hoax, the "Skeleton Brunch" meme and more have become objects of concern for authorities and parents. The FDA's warning about cooking chicken in NyQuil is not the first time authorities or media organizations have given outsized attention to a barely-there online trend. Soon, an essentially non-existent trend that had its roots in a 4chan meme was all over news headlines and social media platforms. When the Food & Drug Administration put out a memo last month warning readers not to marinate chicken in NyQuil cold and flu medicine, it had the opposite effect as intended - instead of keeping people away, it likely led to thousands of new searches for the neon poultry. There was slap-a-teacher, the Momo hoax, Skeleton Brunch. It's the latest in a history of orgs and media falling for fads and turning them into mass panics. When the FDA warned about NyQuil chicken, it had the opposte effect of spotlighting it. When the FDA put out a warning about NyQuil chicken, it had the opposite effect of introducing more people to its existence.
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