Candid Convos: Contextualizing One #ChallengeAccepted Experience

Inspired by interviews I used to conduct as a graduate student and past work, I wanted to explore a series of conversations with colleagues and strangers about interesting trends and topics that permeate our current discourse with some of my own brief thoughts included to better understand different perspectives and compare notes / viewpoints. Note that these conversations below are amended to remove private information as well as given one final edit by the person I spoke with.

Background: #ChallengeAccepted has been a viral trend that took over Instagram and Facebook feeds in the last week of July. The basic and most popular premise at the outset was that this challenge asked women to tag their colleagues via a direct message to post black and white photos of themselves as a sign of empowerment and support amongst one another — mainly on Instagram. CNN gave the estimate that the hashtag was mentioned 4 million times as of July 28th, 2020.

Personal Notes: There have been lots of varying perspectives and articles about the popularity and different narratives of #ChallengeAccepted, my favorite being Terry Nguyen’s Vox article that goes into its history thus far and giving the possible origins of the viral challenge from a 2016 campaign on cancer awareness to a secondary awareness campaign on the harassment of Turkish women.

For me, I was fascinated with #ChallengeAccepted from the standpoints of virality, empowerment and slacktivsm, which were all themes brought forward by media outlets and ‘influencers’ as well as how virality gets co-opted and reshaped. I also saw a lot of different perspectives online from those condemning the challenge as shallow to others appreciating the challenge either as empowering or enlightening and was curious what the quick look back on it was for someone who participated.

I also understood that this challenge wasn’t directed at me and know that my perspective isn’t as important here since it comes from a male gaze, but I did want to listen and learn from one of my female friends who did participate in this and her thoughts coming fairly fresh off of all of the follow-up from it.

Through this conversation, I do believe that my colleague thought a lot about the decision to participate and didn’t take it lightly, especially because of that one-to-one connection with a friend and coming through a direct message. It does showcase both a more thoughtful social media use case scenario as well as how even careful research can still result in issues with how viral campaigns do morph into different beings. The positive messaging and empowerment made the challenge compelling, especially in a dour year as 2020 up to now. The change in narrative of the challenge’s origins did give my colleague pause, but ultimately, the pros outweighed the cons and much as how Terry Nguyen summarizes in her article, the content was considered fairly harmless and ultimately still brought some positivity and levity.

I hope that you find this conversation an interesting and insightful read — whatever your viewpoints may be.

Notes for interview:

• Italics = myself
• Non-italics = my colleague

How did you find out about the challenge?

One of my friends on Instagram had nominated and tagged me in a message.

When you got the DM what was your first thought?

Well, initially I saw these black and white flip photos kind of floating around the Internet for the past two days, and when my friend nominated me, I thought on it for a while, as I don’t really enjoy posting on social media in general. So sort of depending on the situation, I knew it was a ‘do or you don’t’ response. I have to really decide from there whether or not to participate.

From a general observation, why don’t you post as much on social media and how did that impact accepting the challenge?

Two personal reasons. One is whether or not I’m in the mood to post. The second reason is based off of what is happening in the world. I didn’t want it to look like: ‘Hey! Look at all the fun things I’ve done in my life,’ when there should be more focus on other things going on right now.

Let’s see…why did I decide to jump on board. Well, I thought about the person who tagged me and whether it would be important to her. Also, it was just one of those situations where some uplifting would be beneficial considering the US is kinda in the toilet right now. So why not post something that sort of empowers women.

So the reason why I chose my particular #ChallengeAccepted photo was because maybe a week ago, I had to go to work, and I had to wear a mask and a facial shield in order to keep myself safe. I felt because it was a work photo — it felt more real. I honestly don’t know whether wearing a mask and face shield would add any impact as far as getting more “likes”.

When did you hear about the Turkey femicide explanation behind #ChallengeAccepted?

So I first initially saw it as an Instagram story from a friend. And you know how we go through stories so quickly that it’s like really hard to read into it, and it wasn’t until maybe a couple hours later that people started reposting on their pages.

After learning about this new explanation, what were your feelings towards the original post?

There’s so much misinformation out in the public now, so when I saw the explanation, I was telling myself, this is really embarrassing and how did this movement that was about these women that have been essentially murdered evolve into this? People need to check their stuff before participating in this viral challenge, but I just felt as though it was a double edged sword because this challenge was advertised to help empower women.

I was understanding that we needed to know where the challenge originated, but you also want to put out there the message of women empowerment, so it made me straddle the line of whether I should keep up or remove the image. In the end, I just chose to leave it up. For myself, I just need to do more research when it comes to these kind of challenges and really know where they come from as opposed to looking like an idiot.

To me, virality on social media is tough to always talk about. It reminds me of the ALS water bucket water bucket challenge in which people dumped water on their head to raise money for the ALS treatments because. In that case as well, there’s a misconception in where it originally came from. The original video was a group of like teenagers in the winter, pouring water over themselves for fun. It wasn’t until we get to professional golfers years later where eventually, one professional sports player would connect the challenge into what we now know as the ALS challenge, even though the ALS Foundation never really supported it until the end of the life of the viral campaign.

So another part of the story not being talked about here is that the #ChallengeAccepted phenomenon may date back even further to 2016 where it was connected to cancer survivors. And so it’s interesting to me because on the one hand, this viral challenge’s origin definitely shifted quickly a few times, but whatever the origin may be, like you said, the messaging seemed empowering and positive. I’m curious on then your thoughts overall on whether you think the challenge was empowering versus empty?

Honestly, I just felt as though with issues with schools opening up, unemployment and everything, this (challenge) seemed to bring us all together for a moment. And then, the follow-up hit the community like a wave of negativity.

I do think it’s super fascinating I think to view this as a technique to raise awareness right now whether or not it was originated for whatever purpose it might be. One comparison I did see made by others were the black squares from #BlackoutTuesday which was also co-opted by other users and had some similarities to #ChallengeAccepted as well in terms of the posting, the reaction, and then the response.

Yeah. It did feel similar to the squares and people that were trying to figure out what was going on through the motions of how quickly the viral challenge spread.

An interesting feeling to note here is that I did feel as though the photo that I put up was more than just like a selfie of myself. I don’t want my face plastered on the Internet just for fun, so I joined here because I felt a responsibility to help out other women. If others just thought that this girl is going to take the time to take selfies, then I would think that my time spent on this challenge is stupid. So I just wanted to show the world that I’m wearing a mask and this freaking shield, so that I can be safe and you can be safe too, and that I took the time to choose my picture carefully.

I just feel as though, especially for your social media, you have to put out there like stuff that has weight to it because I want to put out content that I think that really reflects what’s important to me. I do think here about the process in which a majority of people tried to empower people versus some people trying to put up a cheap selfie or some other content that just focuses on themselves selfishly, and I don’t want to be like that and be a hypocrite.

I want to feel as though we’re all in this together, making sure that it’s a healthy environment and that we are literally there for each other. So I do remind myself that if I put up a picture of myself on my Instagram, that I do think what is it saying and show how much I care for my friends’ time looking at my content .

I get the argument that people posted without thinking of the deeper meaning, but I also see this as something positive. It’s not hurting anyone. It’s not like you are a prince asking for a million dollars. It’s just about a message of encouragement with a powerful selfie of yourself, and I just seen that positivity for the most part.

Like you said, people need to be aware that this was for something else. I also found it interesting in this case because I did find it fascinating to see such a viral trend change so quickly and that’s what surprised me. Also, the challenge wasn’t created for nefarious reasons, and that’s what helped me decide to not take my photo down because it can still be seen as being positive and still empowering for the most part.

I feel as though I use social media just to showcase highlights of something I did, but I’m going to tell you the truth, that when my friend sent me the original message for the challenge; I read it, and I sat on it for like a couple hours because I don’t like participating in these challenges to begin with, and in the end, I come back to the positive cause of empowerment.