DISCLAIMER: DO NOT SNORT CONDOMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, in 2013, a website published a post titled 9 People Doing the Condom Challenge, and some of the YouTube videos included in the article have since been removed. The so-called challenge involves snorting a condom up one nostril and pulling it out of your mouth. Got it? OK.
Don't worry, it doesn't seem like a ton of teens are doing this.
There are a handful of Instagram posts of people snorting up rubbers. Two of the videos reviewed by BuzzFeed News were shared last month, and another one was from July 2017.
"In all my years I have never seen a woman snort a condom....but at a sublime concert I suppose this is expected!!!" the caption on the footage from last year reads.
The bulk of condom snorting videos reviewed by BuzzFeed News on YouTube were from years ago. But that did not stop the MEDIA from recently talking about this "trend" as if a bunch of teens are doing it.
Take this, from Fox News, filed under "Viral." "Tide Pods are so January," the article begins.
My mom's worst nightmare.
Dun, dun, DUNNNNN.
The LATEST thing in YOUTH.
Dangerous & trendy.
Outlets even sent out ALERTS, appealing to teens directly and politely. "No one wants to be that guy."
Someone else was like, let them die.
The condom challenge then, like everything, became political.
Anyway, now that everyone is talking about it, here's a reminder about why you should NOT do this — from an expert.
Dara Kass, an emergency medicine physician and spokesperson for the American College of Emergency Physicians, used a number of adjectives to describe condom snorting in the course of her interview with BuzzFeed News, including "gross," "disgusting," and "stupid."
"Do not do this," Kass said. "It is dumb and it has no benefits. It doesn't make any sense."
As for medical danger: "The biggest medical risk is that you inhale the condom or a piece of the condom, and it gets into your airway and it either covers part of your airway or it goes into your lungs, which can put you at risk for pneumonia," she said.
She also warned teens that they won't be proud of having snorted condoms when they're no longer teens.
"When you're grown up," she said, "you're not going to be proud of this."