The porcelain challenge didn’t need to be real to get views

Durfee tried to make fake news that was transparent about being fake but still spread. A false rumor started that Hank Green had been arrested for trying to steal a lemur from a zoo when he was a teenager.

On Sunday, Durfee and his friends watched as #PorcelainChallenge gained traction, and they celebrated when it generated its first media headline: "TikTok's porcelain challenge is not real but it's not something to joke about either". Some of the headlines were more credulous than others.

It has a short life span. Three days after Durfee posted his first video about the porcelain challenge, he already knew that it wouldn't catch on. It is with a heavy heart that I say goodbye.

It is possible for viral moments to be reanimated with just a small amount of attention. They can be more powerful by stripping away their previous context. Sometimes these sorts of zombies are giving teens a second life that is larger and more dangerous than the first.

There are even more dumb ideas on the internet that don't trend until someone freaks out about them, like thecinnamon challenge, which put participants at risk for some nasty health consequences, and the idea that the internet is a place for stupid ideas.

A couple of weeks ago, the US Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about boiling chicken in NYQuil, causing a panic over a craze that would endanger Gen Z lives. The warning itself was the most popular thing on the internet, spiking interest in a "trend" that wasn't popular.

Thecondom challenge gained widespread media coverage as the latest life threatening thing teens were doing online for attention, because a local news station sat in on a presentation at a Texas school on the dangers teens face. The condom challenge had a few blips of interest online in 2007, but videos of people actually snorting a condom up their nose were sparse. The fear of teens flocking to take part in a dangerous challenge amplified it to a much larger audience than the challenge alone could do.

The challenge has all the elements of a zombie movie. A bite on the arm is what it's called. The posts and videos posted on social media by Durfee's followers are plausible and free of context.