About

Cup Blowing Challenge is a social media game that involves combining two disposable or lightweight cups into a stack and blowing against the surface of the top cup to sling it out of its place with the aim of landing it into a third cup at a distance away.

Origin

The challenge first appeared on YouTube in 2011, when an upload by The Trendy Videos showed a college student demonstrating the act.

On July 27th, 2016, some of the earliest known video recordings of the #CupBlowingChallenge under the hashtag were uploaded to YouTube^[1] and Instagram.^[2] However, the precise origin of the game or its inventor remains unknown, though it was likely popularized through word-of-mouth as a party trick or a drinking game, given its sole reliance on disposable and lightweight glassware as game pieces.

Spread

On January 9th, 2017, YouTuber AshTonk uploaded a video demonstration of the #CupBlowingChallenge, though his introduction clearly suggests that the game had been invented and played prior to the video (shown below).

In March 2017, Instagram user @mo150__ uploaded a video of his friend Deandre performing the cup blowing challenge using two plastic glasses during lunch at a school cafeteria setting. On March 17th, WorldStarHipHop tweeted the video with the caption "can't lie, that was pretty clean…🤔😳👍 ," which drew more than 4,000 retweets and 8,000 likes, while bringing mass exposure to the classmates' recess pastime on the social media platform. On the following day, Bleacher Report UK tweeted the same video with the caption declaring #CupBlowingChallenge as happeninging." On March 20th, Twitter ran a video compilation of #CupBowlChallenge videos in a Moment listicle titled "forget bottle flipping, try cup blowing."

Examples

External References