Red Cup Challenge

Submission 4,424

Part of a series on Internet Challenges. [View Related Entries]

About

The Red Cup Challenge is the name of a social media challenge that started in July of 2020. The challenge involves balancing a red solo cup on your forehead in a standing position, then carefully making your way to the floor, positioning yourself on your back, and raising your legs towards the cup. To win the challenge, you have to grab the cup with your legs and maneuver it onto the ground above your head without dropping or tipping it.

Origin

On July 23rd, 2020, TikToker Jena Frumes^[1] uploaded a video captioned, "Have you tried this?" in which she performs the red cup challenge (shown below, left). The video garnered over 2.1 million views and 347 thousand likes in roughly three months, and inspired a number of other TikTokers to try the challenge. An example of this can be seen in a video uploaded by TikToker pamelastefanowicz^[2] on August 26th, which garnered over 298 thousand views in under 2 months (shown below, right).

Spread

The Red Cup Challenge didn't gain significant traction until October 6th, 2020, when rapper Saweetie^[3] posted a video of herself performing it on Instagram (shown below). The video gained over 3 million views and 932 thousand likes in a day.

As the video gained traction Instagram users began uploading their own attempts at the challenge, hashtagging them #redcupchallenge. On the day Saweetie uploaded her video, Instagrammer labritney^[4] uploaded a video of herself successfully performing the challenge, gaining over 173 thousand views and 29 thousand likes in two days (shown below, left). On October 7th, Instagrammer princesslove^[5] uploaded her own successful challenge attempt, garnering over 548 thousand views and 103 thousand likes in a day (shown below, right).

Videos of people performing the challenge continued to fill up the hashtag #redcupchallenge, with over 2,600 videos using the hashtag as of October 8th. On October 6th, hotnewhiphop published a story on the challenge.^[6] On October 7th, News Break^[7] and StayHipp^[8] reported on it as well.