Mannequinning: How holding still is going viral

The mannequinning trend, otherwise known as the “Mannequin Challenge” is sweeping social media.

People pose as if they were mannequins by holding completely still for the challenge. The overall goal is to make the scene appear as if it is a freeze frame from a video, according to npr.org.

NPR also shows the trend began after students in Jacksonville Florida’s Edward H. White high school created a video and shared it on social media using the hashtag #mannequinchallenge.

Many celebrities, including the Baltimore Ravens and Hillary Clinton, have also participated in the challenge.

BYU students have responded to this trend with enthusiasm as well. So far multiple BYU sports teams, BYU Vocal Point and Provo’s Sodalicious have made mannequinning videos of their own, all of which have been shared multiple times across social media platforms.

Perhaps the most popular mannequin challenge video that has come out of BYU thus far is from BYU Gymnastics. The team released their video on Nov. 4 and received over 1.5K likes.

The video has since been featured by multiple news outlets, including ESPN where they called it the “most entertaining thing you’ll see all week.”

Electrical engineering major Reese Bastian said he thinks mannequinning is so popular because it’s easy to do.

“Anybody can do it,” Bastian said. “It creates quite the effect. If you get people to hold still and not move their eyes or anything, then everybody actually looks like a mannequin.”

Bastian said he recently filmed a mannequin challenge in his YSA Elders Quorum. He explained it was really fun to get everyone together to participate in the trend.

“We did the challenge about two weeks ago on Sunday and it was cool because a lot of people in the ward hadn’t actually heard about the trend yet,” Bastian said. “A lot of people in the video had never heard of it before. It’s cool to be on the cutting edge of pop-culture. It makes you feel in the know and young.”

BYU senior and creator of the Sodalicious mannequin challenge Kel Robbins said being a part of this type of event provides a unique perspective.

“Being the one that filmed the shot, my position in the video was unlike most involved,” Robbins said. “While they froze momentarily as a camera passed by, they get to look around at the setting of motionless people in a usually active setting.”

Robbins said he believes the mannequin challenge is a very clever trend that resembles a paused video game.

“I think most people like this specific viral video because it is a rare view of reality in a 3D point of view,” Robbins said. “It may be staged and some people add extra ideas to be funny, but it is a pretty close representation of a what life’s activity would look like if you paused it.”