Analysis of Results

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Analysis of Results

The Key to Age-Locked Videos

In order to formulate a quantitative assessment of risk that the viral video challenge genre may pose, I turned to YouTube’s intrinsic safeguarding tool: ‘Age-Lock’. According to YouTube, “Age-restricted content” is content that “doesn't violate our policies, but may not be appropriate for all audiences” (Y ouTube Age Restriction) . These “age-restricted videos are not visible to users who are logged out, are under 18 years of age, or have Restricted Mode enabled” (Ibid). YouTube has dened the stipulations for age-restricted videos as something that contains at least one of the following: “vulgar language, violence and disturbing imagery, nudity and sexually suggestive content or portrayal of harmful or dangerous activities” (Ibid). Violating videos may be agged in a number of ways such as “video title, description, metadata, Community Guidelines reviews,” in order “to identify and lter out potentially mature content” (Ibid). Therefore, by aggregating which videos had an ‘Age-Lock’ imposed by YouTube, we may come to understand which challenges generally tend to consistently present more “harmful or dangerous activities”. Particularly as the platform relies heavily on public perception and participation through the ‘report’ module available on each video. While age-restricted videos are “not appropriate for all audiences” they are not directly “violating” their policies. Therefore one must question why YouTube permits the publication of content that is both “not appropriate for all audiences” and depicts “harmful or dangerous activities”.

As the only videos to have age-restriction imposed upon them fall into either the Harmful or Dangerous category proposed above, it is clear that despite YouTube’s “Policies on harmful or dangerous Content” there is still a lack of armative action in the case of regulation. Indeed, the rst line of their policy states that, “content that aims to encourage dangerous or illegal activities that risk serious physical harm or death is not allowed on YouTube” (Y ouTube Policy on Dangerous and Harmful Content) . However, the fact that YouTube has simply restricted the access to these videos to users over the age of 18 instead of banning them completely raises several questions of regulatory culpability.

Major Risk to Minors

The most important aspect of Internet regulation that this paper is concerned with is the protection of the numerous minors that regularly use the platform. As stated above, YouTube has some safety nets built into its policies in order to protect children from the many harmful videos are frequently uploaded on the site. One such example is the platform’s restriction on “dangerous or threatening pranks: Pranks that lead victims to fear imminent serious physical danger, or that create serious emotional distress in minors” (Y ouTube Policy on Dangerous and Harmful Content) . Moreover, the platform’s guidelines stipulate that uploaders are warned not to “post content showing a minor participating in dangerous activity, or encouraging minors to engage in dangerous activities. Never put minors in harmful situations that may lead to injury, including dangerous stunts, dares, or pranks.” (Ibid). YouTube’ s nal policy for the protection of children is that the video should not depict acts that “could be easily imitated by minors” (Ibid).

However, despite YouTube’ s apparent desire to impose regulatory services of child-protection, they are at best unsuccessful. Disregarding the likliehood that underaged users may provide false ages for their accounts, thereby cheating the system, there are other ways that children could access age-restricted videos with ease. Indeed, a simple Google search of “watch age restricted youtube videos” results in a full page of instruction videos and ‘how-to’ pages, with each oering several methods of evasion5,6. The fact that many of the search results yielded links to YouTube instruction videos shows that there is little cohesive regulation for the protection of minors online.7

Indeed according to Dubit and Sherbert’s study of 5,000 families in the US and UK, “29% of 2-5 year-olds and 25% of 6-7 year-olds are watching videos online every day, rising to 33% for 8-10 year-olds

5Bidasaria, Gaurav. “7 Ways to Watch Age Restricted YouTube Videos Without Signing In.” TechWiser, 22 May 2018, techwiser.com/watch-age-restricted-youtube-videos/. 6 w ikiHow. “How to Bypass Age Restrictions on YouTube Videos.” WikiHow, WikiHow, 23 Dec. 2018, www.wikihow.com/Bypass-Age-Restrictions-on-YouTube-Videos.Proxy, Smart DNS. 7 W atch Age Restricted YouTube Videos Without Signing In.” YouTube, 24 Mar. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNNeGgqYpnI.

and 45% for 11-14 year-olds” (Dredge, Stuart. The Guardian. 7 Oct. 2014). Therefore there is a signicant number of children that are subjected to YouTube’s age-restrictions and unable to view videos that may fall into the Harmful or Dangerous categories. However, if these children are not watching videos on their parent’s account, at any point they would be able to access age-restricted content after a swift Google search. Not to mention the multitudes of mirror platforms such as ‘www.nsfwyoutube.com’ whose tagline is “Watch YouTube videos without signing in/up for YouTube account. Bypass registration trick!” (www.nsfwyoutube.com). Websites such as this, that are available on Google’s front page, pose a great threat to at-risk children as they allow them to access Dangerous c ontent, which they may attempt to reproduce.

Active Actors

Upon completing the study, I was left with the 100 most viewed viral video challenges on YouTube. One key nding was the frequent recurrence of specic actors. Running the list of publishers through the DMI Triangulator tool there were several notable ndings. Of the ten challenges, two accounts reappeared within 40% of the challenges. The image below shows the result of this triangulation.

The accounts that recur most frequently were ‘fernanoo’ and ‘guava juice’. Both of these publishers have received over 5 Billion views between them, and have over 32.9 Million and 13.5 Million subscribers respectively. Therefore, due to their high view count one must suggest that they are established microcelebrities. The channel ‘Guava Juice’ is based in the Philippines, but operates in English, and oers a variety of platform specic content such as vlogs, music videos and various “challenges”. Indeed, ‘Guava Juice’ utilised the aordances of YouTube to create a curated playlist of over 263 videos with 20,540,461 views.

Next is ‘Fernanoo’, a microcelebrity based in El Salvador who produces mainly Spanish-speaking videos. The two most frequently occurring channels have generated millions of views from their participation in viral video challenges. ‘Fernanoo’ accumulated 23,713,986 views, while ‘Guava Juice’ acquired 53,899,913 views. As both of these channels are monetized, they each generate signicant income from their involvement in viral video challenges. While one may argue that this is perfectly anodyne as neither of them participate in overtly ‘D angerous’ challenges. Opting instead to generally take part in more Innocuous challenges, with the notable exception of both exploiting the success of the Condom Challenge. However, one must note that both of these channels are complying with YouTube’s guidelines for their own benet. This is because as previously stated in the ‘minors at risk’ segment of this paper, many dangerous challenges are age-restricted and “age-restricted videos are not eligible for monetization” (Y ouTube Age Restricted Content) . Therefore, there is nothing to say that these channels would not participate in overtly dangerous challenges if they were able to monetize them. Particularly as Guava Juice already has a playlist specically called “Do Not Do This!” (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg8oaaTdoHzMxpqfzRHzxC-qf9Ej60dBK).

Related Actor Networks One other notable actor in the viral video challenge genre is ‘PewDiePie’, one of the major actors on YouTube with over 90 million subscribers. PewDiePie, or Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg posted two videos that made it into the dataset studied. One contribution is to the Charlie Charlie Challenge, and the other within the Bottle Flip Challenge. Similar to ‘Guava Juice’, Kjellberg has taken advantage of YouTube’s aordances and curated a playlist of challenge videos. These 24 videos have slightly over 1.5 million views and date from June 23rd 2014 to Feb 27, 2017.

The popularity of PewDiePie emphasises the assertion made by Torres and Trinidad that “YouTube tends to recommend the popular channels because they are simply great within their genre, so YouTube promotes them.” (Torres & Trinidad. 2015, p.9). Therefore, when considering microcelebrities such as PewDiePie, Guava Juice and Fernanoo, one must note that YouTube’s algorithm favours high-prole channels that frequently participate in the viral video challenge genre. In order to further prove this assertion, I have undertaken a study of my own. This is in order to better understand the “social network structure”, of YouTube and the implications of the “small-world characteristics” that are present throughout the platform (Ibid). By utilising the preceding study by Torres et al., and publications by YouTube software engineers outlining the viewing patterns of YouTube communities I was able to produce ndings that conrm assertions that the platform’s “recommendations will by nature connect channels that are more similar in content, but not directly connected” (Torres & Trinidad. 2015, p.4). Below are two examples of YouTube’s “small-world characteristics”, that manifest in “cliques and nodes” that “are linked to all others by relatively short paths” (Ibid, p.1).

Considering the presentation of ndings above, one may argue that despite YouTube’s eorts to restrict access to Dangerous challenges, they may actually be accountable for promoting their success. This is because, “YouTube’s recommendation algorithm” keeps “similar types of content together” (Torres et al. 2015, p.5). Therefore, by keeping this content together, YouTube may unintentionally redirect viewers intending to watch a Wholesome viral video challenge (such as the most viewed video in this study, ‘W ater Bottle Flip 2 | Dude Perfect’) , to channels that propagate participation in more Harmful videos (such as Fernanoo) with two clicks via PewDiePie. This attests to the power of big seed marketing, where channels with high subscriber counts act as the big seed. This is particularly true for Spanich-centric Channels who have a larger portion of channels associated with risk.

Additionally, incentives in the form of monetization and “business tools” being “rewarded by YouTube” to accounts with more than 100,000 subscribers may contribute to the “genres and rising commercialisation” of the platform (Rogers. 2018, pp.4-6). This rising commercialisation may be leading to more radical forms of content creation. Particularly as YouTube’s “recommendation algorithm promotes divisive clips” (Lewis, Paul, and Erin McCormick. The Guardian. 2 Feb. 2018). Indeed, the only deterrent that YouTube has implemented is the risk of demonetization for publishing dangerous challenges. They do nothing to stop the challenges from occurring. One may argue that with this current model we see a neoliberal free market that prioritises the generation of clicks over user wellbeing. In theory, there is nothing to stop publishers from initiating a Dangerous challenge, and cashing in on the returns before the platform steps in to demonetize them after the challenge goes viral. Therefore one may argue that the publishers are not to blame for the recent trend of Dangerous challenges as they are simply working within the parameters delineated by YouTube itself. Instead, it is the community guidelines that must be adjusted further to discourage dangerous participation.

Visualizing Views

Undeniably, one of YouTube’ s most important datametrics is the view count. According to Rogers, “those who run channels seek subscribers and views” (Rogers. 2018, p.4). YouTube conrmed this, stating: “video views reect how many times a video has been watched and can be an important measure of a video's overall popularity” (Y ouTube How Video Views are Counted) . As view count provides a quantitative indicator of cultural popularity, I have recorded and visualised the total views for each of the videos that I have studied. Hopefully this will demonstrate the popularity of the challenge specically on YouTube. As can be seen from the images below, the popularity of rst viral video challenge, the Ice Bucket Challenge, is not to be understated. Indeed, it is the second most viewed challenge overall. Therefore it can be seen as a clear progenitor of the trend. One might suggest that the popularity of this challenge blazed the trail for the current environment of the viral video challenge, genre that has since amassed a staggering 1,554,675,025 views.

Despite the widespread popularity of the viral video challenge genre, there are several challenges with relatively few overall views. Namely: the Fire Challenge, the Tide Pod Challenge, and the Bird Box Challenge. Indeed, these three lowest ranking videos have amassed only 19,955,153 views in total. The reason behind the signicantly reduced number of views may be attributed to YouTube’s crackdown on such dangerous challenges. Particularly as YouTube’s policies on harmful or dangerous content explicitly cite two of these challenges as “extremely dangerous challenges” or “challenges that pose an imminent risk of physical injury such as the choking game, re challenge, detergent-eating challenges, the “no lackin’ challenge,” or hot water challenge” (Y ouTube Policy on Dangerous and Harmful Content) .

Therefore, one may suggest that the low view count is a testament to the success of YouTube’s agging system, and the removal of content that violates their community guidelines. Furthermore the platform’s policy goes on to suggest stipulation for mitigating circumstances. “A video that depicts dangerous acts may be allowed if the primary purpose is educational, documentary, scientic, or artistic (EDSA), and it isn’t gratuitously graphic. For example, a news piece on the dangers of choking

games would be appropriate, but posting clips out of context from the same documentary might not be” (Y ouTube Policy on Dangerous and Harmful Content) . This may attest to the low view count of several Dangerous challenges. The majority of these videos are not participatory, but are generally news reports on the consequence of participation. Note the occurrence of news publications such as ‘Inside Edition’ that has two news videos featuring the Fire Challenge and the Bird Box Challenge. While these “EDSA” videos do not depict participation, one may argue that they are still detrimental as they often use clickbait such as disturbing images of failed challenges in the thumbnail. Another popular type of video format for the restricted challenges is a ‘vlog’ or ‘talk show’. These usually feature anecdotal segments pertaining to participation in a challenge, or act as a warning viewers of the dangers of participation. One notable example can be seen in the image below.

One must question how these Dangerous challenges were able to obtain so many views. One must discuss the consequences of allowing videos such as Holmes’. Despite the fact that he seems to deter potential challengers, critics have stated that there may be more harmful forces at play. “Instead of bandages, blisters, and burns, they see the videos like the re challenge as an opportunity for popularity” (Marshall, Veronica. Valley News live, Aug 21, 2018). This is particularly true when considering the aforementioned: “ ' x ! ” which depicts two individuals handling live ames. Specically, when the platform explicitly names “Fire Challenge” in its list of restricted content.

Below is a further analysis of my view count study:

Measuring Public Perception: Likes and Dislikes

View count is not the only indicator of user engagement. Indeed, it has been suggested that views “indirectly measures a user’s engagement and happiness,” indeed, “the fact that a user watched a video in its entirety is not enough to conclude that she actually liked it” (Davidson, James, et al. 2010, p.294). Therefore, I utilised more a “explicit feedback such as a thumbs up or a thumbs down of a video” to provide a more explicit indicator of challenge success (Gamas, Alex. 23 Sept. 2016). This datametric accounts not just for user engagement, but also provides an indictment of general mood towards the video, and by extension, the challenge on a whole. Inversely, the dislike count can be used to ascertain a viewer's negative feelings towards certain challenges and videos. In order to either like or dislike a video on YouTube, users must have an account. Therefore one argues that these datametrics, unlike views which can be attributed to individuals without accounts, provides a more coherent status of YouTube’s community. Therefore I have compiled the total likes over dislikes in order to ascertain how popular certain challenges have become. However, this may not provide a denitive indicator of mood towards challenges due to the disparity between the number of views and likes. Therefore, in order to account for this I have created a separate visualisation for the ratio of dislikes to likes (see ‘gure 34’).

One consideration that must be accounted for when considering explicit feedback is the prerogative of the publisher to make certain datamatics available for user engagement. Fortunately only one video had disabled the likes and dislikes module, therefore the results of this analysis can be regarded as generally reliable. The only exception can be found in the lower than expected like count of the Running Man Challenge compared to its view count. This is because the 8th most popular video in this category disabled user interaction. Indeed, it is likely that a video with 5,240,507 views (less than 50,000 fewer than the following challenge) would achieve tens of thousands of likes. However, this video features a police department participating in a challenge that was uploaded by the ocial YouTube account of Plymouth Minnesota: ‘PlymouthMNgov’. The reason for not incorporating comments or likes onto the video is surely to limit politically charged statements. Indeed,this video was posted July 6, 2016, at the peak of the “Blue Lives Matter” political tension in America (see below).

The Bottle Flip Challenge acquired the most dislikes, however when adjusted to a proportional formula it appears that the number of dislikes is symptomatic of the view count. The most disliked video is the 5th most viewed overall, by publisher user, Fernanﬂoo. This Spanish-language video depicts the user participating in the Charlie Charlie Challenge. As this challenge has strong Hispanic roots, it is no surprise that the most viewed video in this category is by one of YouTube’s highest subscribed Spanish-speaking content producers. Furthermore, the Charlie Charlie Challenge has the second highest number of dislikes. This may be due to the content of the challenge itself. The controversial nature of the challenge originates in its ease to be simulated, particularly when the video frequently cuts between shots instead of long-takes. As previously stated there is a scientic reason behind the movement of the pencils therefore, one may suggest that there are two inuential reasons behind users participation in this challenge. Firstly, they are doing so because participation in a viral video challenge will result in prestige through association with an already viral trend (similar to the logic behind the marketing team of Rae Sremmurd). This may prove why this particular challenge was able to achieve the third highest overall view count. The second reason is unfortunately no less sinister: that the accounts behind the publication of these videos believe that they are convening with a Mexican ghost-child either through religious belief, result expectancy or mass hysteria.

Community Comments

Similar to likes and dislikes, the comment count of a video provides invaluable insight into user engagement. YouTube has corroborated this in a public statement: “comments are an important way creators build and connect with their audiences” (Fox, Chris. BBC. 28 Feb. 2019). However, a signicant percentage (14%) of the videos had comments disabled. This may lead to incomplete ndings that do not truly reect the connection between creators and their audience. The ndings below may at rst seem inconsistent with previous indicators of popularity, however there is a distinct reason for this. In an attempt to increase their child protection service, YouTube started to regulate comments on videos with minors. In a statement from February 2019, a spokesperson stated that “we’ve been taking a number of steps to better protect children and families” on the platform, “suspending comments on most videos that feature minors,” (Binder, Matt. M ashable. 28 Feb. 2019).

With the exception of the Mannequin Challenge’ s 7th most popular video, and the aforementioned restrictions imposed by PlymouthMNgov, all of the other challenges with comments disabled feature minors. These minors appear either as the focal point of the channel (seen by actors such as MattyBVlogs and That's Amazing) , or feature in compilation videos, or alongside the owners of the channel such as TheEllenShow where Ellen interviews the two sixteen year olds credited with starting the R unning Man Challenge.

While YouTube will argue that these measures were taken in order to better protect the regular users of their platform, one must question their priorities. The platform has taken the onus upon itself to protect children from predatory comments by banning comments on videos with minors. However many of the videos portray young children show them participating in risky challenges such as the video ‘K ylie Jenner Challenge Fail (Compilation)’. This has the comment feature disabled due to its depiction of minors, yet these underaged individuals are nonetheless taking part in a Harmful challenge that doctors have repeatedly warned against.

While on the one hand, we must commend YouTube for their recent steps to better protect children and families through regulatory practices. On the other hand, they are still hosting videos that show children participating in Harmful challenges. This seemingly directly contradicts their assurance that “YouTube has long prohibited videos which promote harmful or dangerous activities and we routinely review and update our enforcement guidelines to make sure they’re consistent and appropriately address emerging trends” (Hamilton, Isobel. Business Insider Nederland. 20 Jan. 2019). If the platform was truly interested in producing consistent results then it would be impossible to view Harmful or Dangerous challenges at all. Instead, they simply hand out “strikes” to rule breaking channels. These strikes mean that users “won't be able to upload videos, live streams, stories, or create custom thumbnails or Community posts - for one week” (Y ouTube Community Guidelines Strike Basics) . This comes with a 90 day probation period during which if a user has another strike they suer the above consequence for an additional week. If a user receives three strikes within this 90 probation then their account is permanently terminated. However, this is not a signicant deterrent. This does not stop channels from uploading dangerous content, instead it just limits the timeframe in which they can post such “harmful or dangerous activities” (Y ouTube Policy on Dangerous and Harmful Content) . In theory, if a user wanted to cash in on a popular trend that goes against YouTube’s guidelines then they would be able to do so up to four times a year (365/90). As the most viral video challenges that have occurred in one year is four, YouTube is clearly in need of reassessing its regulation. The platform surely must protect its users instead of promoting loop-holes for content producers. As these publishers are the reason that viewers come to the platform, one must argue that YouTube is yet again prioritising nancial gain over user well-being.

The Lengths we go to: Discussing Duration

The average duration of the most popular viral video challenges promises interesting assessment, particularly when considering the impact that the compilation video has on the genre.

Compilation videos have the additional advantage of being long enough for multiple monetization characteristics, and oer a convenient selection of curated challenges for viewer consumption. Thereby making them a particularly popular format within the viral video challenge genre. Additionally, further contributing factors to the increased trend of what YouTube calls “longform videos” or “videos that are 10 minutes or longer” may be due to one of the platform’s money-making strategies (Y ouTube Manage ad Breaks in Long Videos) . This general trend of longer videos may be attributed to the introduction of mid-roll ads on YouTube. Mid-roll ads can only be added to longform videos and allow content creators to “enable ads during the middle of the video ("mid-roll"), not just at the beginning” (Ibid).

Another reason for the increased popularity of the compilation video may be attributed to the popularity of Twitter’s short video service Vine which had a duration limit of 6 seconds. Twitter announced the closure of Vine on 27th October 2016 (F ox, Chris. BBC News, BBC, 27 Oct. 2016). This was only three days before the average publication date of the Mannequin Challenge. Perhaps it may be an extreme notion to correlate the closure of Vine, which “became the Vine Archive in January 2017”, with the brief year-long hiatus of viral video challenge popularity in 2017 (T witter Vine FAQs) . Yet the sudden fall of a digital communicative tool that had “more than 1 billion loops”, “played every day”, from over “200 million active monthly users”, undoubtedly resulted in a niche for a social media tool that could be easily and eectively utilised by content creators (Lynley, Matthew. Tech Crunch. 5 May 2015),(Smith, Craig. DMR. 22 Mar. 2019). Therefore, one may suggest that the absence of viral video challenges in 2017 may be at least partially linked to the mass diaspora of social media users that were evicted from the platform of digital congregation that Vine aorded. Indeed, the prevalence of

Vine is noted within the videos studied. There are four dierent videos within the dataset that explicitly name Vine compilation videos (‘ Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge EXTREME FAILS Compilation - #KylieJennerChallenge! ALL VINES ’ / ‘Charlie Charlie Pencil Game Vine Compilation | Charlie Charlie Challenge Vine Compilation [HD]’ / ‘Running Man Challenge Vine Compilation’ & ‘Adults React to Running Man Challenge Vine Compilation (ft. SING IT! Cast)’) , and ve further videos that oer compilations not exclusive to Vine.

Interconnected Caption Content

Popular videos prove a valuable breeding ground for the promotion of other products. This can be seen by the quantity of external links in the caption section of the top 100 viral video challenge videos. Of the 100 available captions, only 23% did not contain a hyperlink to either an external website, or the user’s alternate channel. As 77% of video captions contain hyperlinks, it is clear that content creators exploit their popularity in order to further their commercial success, either through linking viewers to their other accounts, or through including third party advertising. This corroborates the ndings of Gary Geisler and Sam Burns who, in their research into the ‘Conventions and Strategies of the YouTube Community’ . Here they cite “many examples of tagging behaviors that indicate tags are being used in ways that do not enhance the description of the video”, but instead exploit YouTube’s aordances for personal gain (Geisler, Gary, & Sam Burns. 2007, p.480).

Tantalizing Titles

One of the rst things that a viewer sees when they search for a video is the title. This means that content creators are eager to create intriguing titles that will exploit views out of intrigue. This dark pattern that many channels employ is called “clickbait”. Critics have outlined several dierent models of clickbait specic to YouTube. Indeed, Zannettou et al. suggested that content creators have the “ultimate goal” of increasing “their ad revenue by ensuring that their content will get viewed by millions of users.” (Zannettou, Savvas, et al. 2018, p.103). They go on to describe the clickbait patterns that “YouTubers deliberately employ” in three separate ways: “(i) use of eye-catching thumbnails, such as depictions of abnormal stu or attractive adults, which are often irrelevant to video content; (ii) use of headlines that aim to intrigue the viewers; and (iii) encapsulate false information to either the headline, the thumbnail or the video content (Ibid). All three of these tactics frequently appear within the viral video challenge genre. These denitions of clickbait are particularly relevant when considering the D angerous category such as the B ird Box Challenge, o r the Tide Pod Challenge (see below).

As the examples above demonstrate, clickbait is a common characteristic of the viral video challenge, becoming increasingly associated with microcelebrity contribution to the genre. Using the above image as an example, I argue that by addressing the challenge and adding clickbait to the thumbnail of a video with an ambiguous title, one must argue that well known microcelebrities such as Shane Dawson, PewDiePie and Fernanoo continue to propagate the dissemination and public discourse surrounding the cultural popularity and continued participation of the viral video challenge genre. In order to display how frequently clickbait occurs within the genre I have compiled a binary list of videos which use titles or “headlines that aim to intrigue the viewers” (Zannettou et al. 2018). One clear way to do this was to address the use of capitalization in the title. This is useful as it highlights how frequently YouTubers e mploy dark patterns in order to acquire more views.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is undeniable that the viral video challenge genre has made a signicant impact on social media. However throughout this study, one must note the repeated inconsistencies in the classication of the genre with many news sources and trade publications failing to nd a consistent denition, instead oscillating between phrases such as ‘meme’ or ‘trend’ simply just ‘viral video’.

Time and time again we have seen that exploitation of the viral video challenge genre has powerful economic potential, not just for content producers with monetized accounts, but also to marketing teams backed by big brands. This has been proven by persistent success through association with a challenge. In the best case we have the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that is most frequently accredited as the pioneer of the genre. This challenge raised over $100 million for motoneurone charities worldwide, while simultaneously spreading awareness for the disease by creating a challenge that was “watched by 440 million people a total of 10 billion times” (A LSA.org) . However, while the rst challenge provided recognition and nancial support to a charity, subsequent instances of the viral video challenge increasingly seem to benet a small minority of actors. This can be seen throughout each challenge as individual users rush to participate in viral video challenges while they are at peak success, without much regard for the well being of their viewers who may be encouraged to participate based on the titular challenge nudge. This is particularly true for major microcelebrities such as Shane, PewDiePie, or Fernanoo. All of whom can be described as big-seed marketers for their own brand.

Additionally, there has been signicant commercial success for actors outside of YouTube’s platform limitations. Success through genre proximity can be traced to Kylie Jenner, who became the youngest “self-made billionaire” from the launch of her lip care cosmetics less than 6 months after the “#KylieJennerChallenge” emerged. Likewise, one can correlate the success of musical artists to the appearance of their song in a challenge. The Running Man Challenge facilitated the commercial success of 1995 song ‘My Boo’ by Ghost Town DJs, decades after its initial release. The success that the viral video challenge genre has on songs has not gone unnoticed by advertising professionals. Indeed, the marketing team behind Rae Sremmurd single handedly masterminded the commercial success of the song ‘ B lack Beatles’ through associative proximity to a successful challenge.

Moreover, even negative association seems to provide positive results for marketing teams. Experts have announced that the popularity of the “T ide Pod Challenge” online “may be unexpectedly boosting potential sales” (Marzilli, Ted. YouGov. 24 Jan. 2018) . Likewise, one may propose that the success of the lm Bird Box is linked to the international notoriety of an eponymous viral video challenge. As I have proven that Netix fraudulently claimed that they “didn’t know how” the Bird Box Challenge started, this commercial success becomes even more exploitative and shocking. Particularly as this was a

challenge that was explicitly named in YouTube’s war on dangerous challenges. Indeed, as Netix commissioned the original iterations of the Bird Box Challenge, one might accuse the streaming service of avoiding culpability once the challenge became deadly.

While it is apparent that the consequences of a viral video challenge may be unpredictable, I argue that any brand or cultural artefact that associates itself with a dangerous trend must be held accountable for the results. When it comes to safeguarding, it is unacceptable for platforms to be reactionary. Instead social media sites must be proactive in their pursuit of regulation. It is my rm opinion that good regulation gets good results. This must be addressed before viral video challenges become routinely exploited by big marketing brands that have the backing of key cultural actors and microcelebrities.

Furthermore, microcelebrities and content creators on a whole must take responsibility for their content. Clearly many of them do not fear YouTube’s sanctions, and even if they did there is nothing to stop an unscrupulous user from publishing participation in a potentially dangerous challenge. While this video may become demonetized by YouTube, it would allow the publisher to achieve some level of infamy if they were publicized in a news report. This in turn would increase their standing among the platform’s community network, as well as contribute to the circulation of their channel.

However before we exclusively accuse corporations and content creators of culpability there must be some form of introspective accountability. We cannot ask for regulation without education. To achieve this we must rst have a consistent form of content classication that represents the danger that the viral video challenge genre may pose. Additionally, digital corporations must be more open about the consequences of these challenges. This is particularly important as up to now, the discourse surrounding the topic has been largely shaped by news outlets with a nancial agenda. These fear mongering sources seem to prioritise reports of detrimental challenges because they are more likely to elicit a response. This has the dangerous eect of platforming Dangerous and Harmful challenges that have resulted in serious injury to children (such as the shockingly recent tragedy of Timiyah Landers) or in the wort case, death.

Further avenues of study would be to focus on other video hosting platforms with less strict guidelines, such as Dailymotion or Vimeo. This may provide a more comprehensive understanding of the climate surrounding the viral video challenge, and its place among contemporary digital culture. Indeed, the appearance of the viral video challenge genre would provide an interesting study across a range of dierent platforms. This would provide information on platform-specic nuances, while shedding light on how specic social media ecosystems aord the circulation of cultural content.

Only time will tell how the viral video challenge will be subsequently exploited. One frightening future involves fast food restaurants such as McDonalds sponsoring, or popularising dangerous challenges through big-seed marketing and carte blanche marketing budgets. Surely there must be some

international regulation in place that will stop marketing companies from exploiting the genre to increase the revenue of a multinational corporation at the nancial and nutritional expense of viewers.

Finally, the onus is surely on digital corporations to agree on regulation that will consistently protect not only user’s wellbeing but also their agency. If they fail to do so, and we continue to permit companies such as YouTube were to prioritise their own nancial outlook above the safety of their viewers, then the future outlook of the viral video challenge is ominous. Time and time again corporations have repeatedly failed to adequately protect their users, leading to increasingly risky challenges appearing online. By failing to address the situation when it happened, social media platforms have rejected their roles as gatekeepers for society. I believe that by not condemning these challenges, corporations involuntarily condone them. Dangerous and Harmful challenges have no place in contemporary society. Therefore, I wholeheartedly propose that if media corporations fail to act, then we must implore that international governments step in. Perhaps sanctions will be successful if they target the platforms that host the videos, instead of the individual users. Particularly as nancial deterrents seem to be the only language that multinational corporations understand. I do not feel as though this is excessive when considering the unpredictable consequences of the viral video challenge genre, and the impeccable memory of a digital culture that reveres risk, and glories irony.

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