The Bottle Cap Challenge is Stupid

Yesterday I was crabby about a new sandwich, and today I am crabby about something else that simply doesn't make sense to me.

Recently, when I've been on Facebook, which is terrible and okay all at once somehow, my feed has been inundated with something called "The Bottle Cap Challenge". Now, for those of you that may not know, the bottle cap challenge consists of people doing difficult stuff to spin open a bottle cap, be it a water bottle, a bottle of soda or a beer. The videos show random people throwing things at the bottle to open it, whipping stuff at it to open it, hitting objects into it to open it, and I even saw a person use their belly to open one today.

Now, I do want to say, I do not think I could do this if I tried really hard. It does look tough. My biggest gripe with it though, is simply why? Why is this so cool? Why has it gone viral? Why are people trying to one up one another on this challenge? Why is this a thing? I don't really understand the reason this blew up so much, and why so many people are doing.

The first time I saw a video like this was with the actor Jason Statham. He did a karate kick on what looked like a Nalgene water bottle and the cap spun open. I saw it, said that it looked interesting, and then I completely forgot about it within 5 minutes. But, as I said at the top, since then my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are filled with people doing this, and the hashtag #waterbottlechallenge. It seems like such a dumb thing to become so popular. But no, social media will not let this thing die. In fact, they are pushing it. I saw a grandma open a hot sauce bottle with a towel. I have seen baseball players do it with a bat. As I said, I saw a guy open it with his belly. I have seen people open these bottles a million different ways, and every time I think, why.

And before you say, "why don't you just remove it from your page", "or why are you so upset by this", I have answers for both of those comments. As far as removing it from my homepage, then I would have nothing on there. I can't escape it, no matter how hard I try. If I remove one news company, be it The New York Times or Uproxx or Buzzfeed or ESPN, I would have no news of any kind on my feed. These are the places I read most of my news on the internet, and lately, they are obsessed with this thing.

Why am I so upset you ask? Because this takes as much talent as playing poker. This is a pure luck thing. I can almost guarantee that the people who are posting these videos had to do many, many more than one take. I'd like to see them do it one time. That would be impressive. But, we will never know if they did it in one take because there is only one video. It is also upsetting to me because this is not a talent or a skill that should garner this much attention. I'm mad at myself that I am talking about it, but I have let it really annoy me. This is simply boring and uncool. I do not care that you can make a cap spin off a bottle. I sure as hell do not want to see it in slow motion one thousand times a week. I just think we, as a society, have become so obsessed with becoming famous that people will do anything, including this bottle cap challenge, to get their fifteen minutes. At least with the ALS ice challenge, that was for a good cause. This bottle cap one is for no one or any charity. It is just plain stupid and pointless.

This is just my opinion on yet another fad that I hope will soon disappear.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. Want to impress Ty? Why don’t you guys open the bottle like a goddamn normal person. Not being a show off idiot is what impresses Ty.

Follow Ty on instagram and twitter.

SeedSing is funded by a group of awesome people. Join them by donating to SeedSing.