Don't Judge Challenge

Confirmed 302,463

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About

Don't Judge Challenge (#DontJudgeChallenge) is a selfie video fad in which the participant records oneself at a close-up angle while wearing heavy facial makeup to appear as unattractive as possible, before transitioning into another self-portrait in which the subject is shown in their most photogenic form.

Origin

The challenge reportedly began as a hashtag campaign to combat the widespread phenomenon of body shaming on the Internet, with some of its earliest instances submitted to Instagram sometime between late June and early July 2015.

The identity of the hashtag creator or the location of the original instance remains unclear; however, Chicago Tribune has cited British beauty blogger Em Ford's makeup tutorial video titled "YOU LOOK DISGUSTING" as a potential source of trigger that may have given rise to the hashtag.

Precursor

Prior to the emergence of #DontJudgeChallenge on Instagram, there have been numerous selfie trends centered around the theme of intentionally making oneself look unattractive, such as the Sellotape Selfie Challenge and Kylie Jenner Challenge, not to mention the Pretty Girls, Ugly Faces photo fad that juxtaposes one's least attractive-looking self-portrait with his or her most photogentic counterpart.

Spread

During the first weekend of July 2015, #DontJudgeChallenge quickly snowballed into a full-fledged multi-platform video fad, generating nearly 170,000 user-submitted videos on Instagram, more than 1.7 million mentions on Twitter, according to Topsy Analytics, and over 11,600 clip submissions on Vine within the first week of its takeoff. Meanwhile, as the hashtag continued to take stronghold on other major media-sharing platforms, many observers and social media commentators began expressing skepticism in regard to the effectiveness of the campaign's mission, particularly from those affiliated with the social justice blogosphere."