About

Chair Challenge is a viral game which was first introduced as a parlor trick in the 1970s and then went viral in 2009 on YouTube and 2019 on TikTok. The challenge claims that women can perform the trick but men cannot due to a difference in foot size or center of gravity. It involves a person stepping heel to toe back three steps from a wall, tipping over until their head touches the wall and then lifting a chair up from under themselves and standing.

Origin

On February 9th, 1971, Episode 5 "Judging Books By Covers" of the CBS TV series All In the Family ^[1] aired and featured the trick (shown below).

Spread

On May 22nd, 2009, YouTube user kenbabe2O12 uploaded "chair trick" in which a few people take turns performing the challenge (shown below). The video accumulated over 33,900 views in ten years. Many YouTubers posted videos of their attempts of the next few years and some speculated online as to why typically men cannot perform the trick. In 2019, The Sun Uk ^[2] claimed that scientists still don't know exactly why but figure it had to do with women's typically smaller foot size and lower center of gravity.

On November 15th, TikTok user @culligan received over 189,500 likes and 37,900 shares in 16 days for their attempt at the chair trick (shown below, left). On November 18th, Dr. OZ uploaded a a video of himself trying out the chair challenge to TikTok (show below, right). The video gained over 28,600 likes and 2,900 shares in two weeks.

That same day, Twitter user @katebarstool, reposted her TikTok video of her coworkers trying out the challenge (shown below). The tweet accumulated over 300 likes and 20 retweets in two weeks.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References