About
The Condom Challenge is a dare game that involves inserting a condom into one’s nostril and snorting it back through the throat to be coughed out of the mouth. The game gained attention in April 2013 following the viral takeoff of a YouTube video uploaded by teenager Amber-Lynn Strong.
Origin
On May 3rd, 2006, Break user tommydyhr uploaded a video titled “Condom Sucking From Nose to Mouth,” in which a young man snorts a condom through his nose and extracts it out of his mouth (shown below, left). In the next seven years, the video received upwards of 73,500 views and 130 comments. In the following years, several other condom snorting videos were subsequently uploaded to YouTube, but the phrase “condom challenge” was not coined until May 23rd, 2012, when YouTuber Isaac Mathers uploaded a video performing the same stunt titled “Condom Challenge” (shown below, right). Within one year, the video received over 9,300 views and 25 comments.
Spread
On April 3rd, 2013, the WorldStarTube YouTube channel uploaded a video featuring two girls snorting condoms (shown below, left), which received over 180,000 views and 480 comments in the first two weeks. On April 9th, YouTuber P0tatoPlanet uploaded a video of herself snorting a condom through her nasal passage (shown below, right), garnering more than 150,000 views and 1,180 comments in the following eight days.
That same month, teenager Amber-Lynn Strong uploaded a video of herself performing the challenge (shown below). On April 13th, Redditor redpanda252 submitted the video to the /r/videos[3] subreddit, where it received over 2,800 up votes and 630 comments in the first 72 hours. On April 15th, Amber-Lynn Strong’s video was highlighted on The Huffington Post,[1] Gawker[2] and BuzzFeed.[6] After gaining upwards of 2.2 million views, the video was subsequently removed from YouTube for violating the site’s terms of service.
On the following day, the Internet humor blog Break[5] posted an article about the YouTube trend, citing YouTuber Isaac Mathers’ video as the first known use of the term “condom challenge.” Also on April 16th, notable condom challenge videos were highlighted on the Internet news blog UpRoxx.[7]
Notable Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1]The Huffington Post – Condom Challenge Snorting
[2]Gakwer – Condom Challenge dumbest Thing Kids Have Done
[3]Reddit – The knife fad is old news
[4]UpRoxx – Condom Challenge
[5]Break – Where did the condom challenge come from
[6]BuzzFeed – Condom challenge
[7]UpRoxx – The condom challenge is the condom snorting trend