Netflix has issued an injury warning about the viral fad spawned by its thriller. Over the December and early January period, Bird Box was a cultural hit, with thousands of viewer catching ‘Netflix Original’. However, a Bird Box challenge has emerged with people blindfolding themselves and doing everyday tasks against warnings.
Inspired by the new Netflix thriller, Bird Box, people film themselves completing everyday tasks blindfolded – sometimes for 24 hours – without much success. So much so that Netflix issued a warning.
But there’s a more serious side effect to this meme than basic injuries. Disability researcher Arielle Silverman and her colleagues have shown that conducting “simulations” like blindfolding among the abled can actually lead them to greater negative bias towards blindness itself. After being blindfolded for a short stint, people feel it as a more debilitating condition than it really is; they underestimate the adaptive capability of blind people and end the experiment more likely to agree with statements such as: “If I were blind, I would do anything to get my sight back.”
This is because those participants focus on the beginning stages of the disability, the shock of it, rather than the adaptation process that comes with lived experience. For those who take the Bird Box Challenge, it’s the same story.
When it comes to road safety, there doesn’t even need to be a warning issued. We need all senses to navigate the road. One actually blindfolding yourself for the Bird Box challenge;
Viral challenges have become common over the last few years, with numerous ‘challenges’ seeing mostly young people try to one-up their friends. One of the original challenges, the ALS Ice bucket challenge saw more and more daring challenges unfold as people took riskier scenarios to make their challenge more interesting.
Some challenges are more reflective than harmful, like the recent #10YearChallenge where people post a picture from 2009 and 2019 to illustrate how much more snazzy, beatiful or downright cool they now are. In 2009, YOURS just began its operations!
We get it, these social media challenges can offer some light entertainment from a social media world that can sometimes be isolating. As always, we are highly aware that we don’t want to be party-poopers, we just ask you to be a bit more smarter than the people doing the Bird Box challenge and driving!
As we said during the ‘In my feeling challenge’ – enjoying yourself doesnt have to mean putting yourself in danger!