Almost every month a new viral challenge appears on the Internet, sometimes for a good cause, as was the case with the famous 'Ice Bucket Challenge'. The latest craze is called 'Tide pod Challenge', in which some people are eating liquid detergent capsules in front of the camera.
This challenge consists of cooking, biting or eating these capsules, making them explode in the mouth so that the detergent appears. Obviously, it is a very dangerous practice, and Dr. Alfred Aleguas warned a few days ago of its dangers in USA Today:
"If someone imitates this kind of videos, they could find themselves in a very dangerous situation," Swallowing some of this highly concentrated detergent can cause diarrhea and vomiting, in some cases it could reach the lungs and cause difficulty in breathing.
How this madness began
We have to go back to 2015 to find the origin of this controversial challenge. It was at that moment when The Onion, a satirical medium, published an article about a child who wanted to eat one of these multicolored capsules.
YouTube is deleting the videos in which this challenge appears.
In recent days, YouTube and social networks have been filled with videos of people putting capsules of detergent in their mouths. Obviously, the typical compilations have emerged, but it seems that YouTube is eliminating this type of content because it is "harmful and dangerous".
Anyway, YouTube is allowing those videos that serve as a criticism of this movement, despite the fact that clips appear in which people are seen eating the detergent capsules. Below we can see several examples:
The name of the challenge refers to the brand Tide, one of the best-known detergent companies in the United States. The company wanted to stand out from any involvement with this fashion and has warned about the dangers of using its capsules for anything other than washing clothes:
It is again demonstrated that there are people who are willing to do everything, even to endanger their health, to gain notoriety on the Internet. Far from eating hot peppers or tablespoons of cinnamon, this time the challenge has gotten out of hand.