About

The Great Giraffe Challenge is a Facebook game in which the participant is asked to solve a riddle and submit the answer by private messaging the friend who originally posted the challeng on the social networking site. If the answer is incorrect, the participant must then change his or her Facebook profile to a photograph of a giraffe for three days.

Origin

On October 26th, 2013, New Zealander vlogger Andrew Strugnell^[1] uploaded a video titled “The Great Giraffe Challenge (Facebook Riddle)." In the video, he offers up a riddle about having a surprise breakfast with one's parents at 3 a.m. and requests the viewers to message him on Facebook^[2] with the correct answer. Strugnell also adds that if the answer is incorrect, then the challenger must change the profile picture to a giraffe for three days. The video gained more than 55,000 views in the first 48 hours.

Here is the riddle: 3:00 am, the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors, It’s your parents and they are there for breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread and cheese. What is the first thing you open?

Spread

The same day, Strugnell created a Facebook fan page^[3] for the Challenge, which gained more than 40,500 likes in two days. The page also suggested that the riddle will change weekly. On October 27th, a single serving website^[4] containing the riddle was launched, where people could input their answer directly without having to message Strugnell or the official Facebook page. The same day, people on Yahoo! Answers^[5] began submitting questions as to what the correct answer to the riddle was, while the riddle spread to message boards including Cafe Mom^[6], NetMums^[7], Saverscene Australia^[8] and AnandTech.^[9] Additionally, personal bloggers^[10] began to dispute the logic behind the official answer of the riddle (shown below).

On the morning of October 28th, the riddle had spread to dozens of local radio stations including Montana's The Moose 95.1^[11], Michigan's Cars108^[12], Maine's Q96.1^[13] and New Jersey's 94.3 The Point.^[14] The same day, explanations of the phenomenon appeared a handful of internet culture blogs and news sites including The FW^[15], The Daily Dot^[16], Metro^[17] and the Chicago Tribune.^[18]

Search Interest

External References