Viral Trends

Prologue:

Imagine that it is the year 2018, and the use of social media is at an all-time high. There is a new viral trend every other week, if not sooner. New dance moves are being created, new hashtags are exploding in the Twitterverse, videos are reaching everyone and their mother, and new challenges are being created, which are getting more dangerous every time a new one comes out. Most all teenagers, and sometimes the older generations too, are trying to set off a new trend, or trying to obtain fame somehow or another through social media.

The Foolishness of Viral Trends:

It was the first day back to school after Christmas break for seventeen-year-old Misty. She had been sitting in classes all day going through the motions, not actually paying attention, but during that time she had been pondering ideas of how she could go viral and become a social media star.

She thought to herself, "If only Vine was still alive!" Vine was a really popular six-second video application that was very easy to gain a following on if you had just one video that was hilarious. Many Vines and Viners were still cherished at that point in Misty's life. Unfortunately for Misty, she was just a bit too young to be a Vine sensation.

As she was off daydreaming of becoming a viral sensation, she began to think of what she did over the break, and came to the conclusion she had done a bunch of laundry. Guess what she used to wash her clothes: Tide Pods. In that moment, her big break to become a viral sensation was creating a new challenge, The Tide Pod Challenge to be exact.

Misty got home and immediately started working on her claim to fame. By the end of the night, Misty had videoed herself "eating" a Tide Pod, and spewing the soap back out of her mouth. As Misty sat in her room replaying her video, she said out loud, "Here goes nothing," and then she sent the video out for all of the internet to see. She posted it to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

The challenge did exactly what Misty wanted. She had gone to bed getting her usual 100 to 200 likes, favorites, shares, and retweets, but when she woke up the next morning her phone was bursting with notifications.

She could not believe it, her plan actually worked. She chanted silently in her room, "I have done it, I have created a viral trend, this is my big break." She did this silently, so her parents could not hear what she had done because she knew that they would have been less than happy with her.

Soon enough, the buzz around most schools was, "Have you done the Tide Pod Challenge?" All the teenagers were jumping on the bandwagon. They all had posted their own videos of the challenge, but no one questioned the safety of putting toxic chemicals in their bodies. They were all just doing anything to get views and followers.

Eventually, several different doctors came out with statements that claimed that everyone participating in The Tide Pod Challenge was putting themselves at risk for death. After the claims were made, people began to realize that following a trend is not always the smartest idea, and the challenge deteriorated rather quickly following that.

The new buzz around schools was, "My parents found the video of me eating a Tide Pod, and then I got a lecture about how dangerous and stupid it was of me."

Had the doctors not come out with a huge public notice, kids and young adult of all ages would have continued to risk their lives without thinking twice about the outcome.

Author's Note:

This story was based off of a traditional story, "The Foolish, Timid Rabbit." I have stuck to the basic storyline, but I put a spin on it that is more applicable to modern day life. Misty is the parallel to the timid rabbit, the people copying Misty are the animals that followed the timid rabbit, and the doctors are the lion. I decided to keep the moral of the story the same, but I created a scene that would better resonate with my anticipated readers. The original story was rather short, and I kept it that way because I prefer shorter teaching lessons myself. I also changed the characters from animals to humans. I added a prologue to my version to give a bit more background and context to my readers. This prologue was to sort of target my audience that may not be quite as familiar to social media, as the younger generations are. Since this the second edition of my recreated story, I have decided to add some dialogue. The original story was mostly dialogue. I am not a huge fan of dialogue in my stories, but I felt as though a few dialogues here and there would be nice. That is about all the similarities and differences my story and the original story holds. This recreated story was based off of real events, but the characters are made up. Here is a video that explain what happened. I would have included a video of the actual challenge too, but they have all been taken down due to their contents.

Bibliography. "The Foolish, Timid Rabbit" from Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt. Web Source.