About

#GreySweatpantsChallenge is a photo fad in which male participants take selfies displaying their bulging genitals through a pair of grey sweatpants. After being launched in late November 2016, the hashtag was subsequently hijacked with photographs of people putting various objects down their pants.

Origin

On November 22nd, 2016, Twitter user @Princess_LowKey^[1] tweeted "Can We Get A #GreySweatpantsChallenge Poppin" (shown below). Over the next week, various male Twitter users began posting photographs of themselves wearing grey sweatpants to prominently display a bulge underneath with the hashtag "#GreySweatpantsChallenge."^[3] Additionally, other Twitter users began tweeting reactions to the photographs along with the hashtag (shown below, right).

Spread

That day, Twitter user @JaayBruh^[5] posted a photograph of himself with a large keyboard down the front of his pants with the hashtag #GreySweatpantsChallenge, garnering more than 7,500 likes and 3,500 retweets in five days (shown below, left). Meanwhile, Twitter user @itsStefanzo^[4] tweeted a photograph of himself with a tuba instrument down his pants along with the hashtag (shown below, right).

Also on November 27th, Twitter user @ptreyodactyl^[6] tweeted a #GreySweatpantsChallenge photo with a large Christmas tree sticking out of his pants (shown below). Within five days, the tweet gained over 4,400 likes and 2,200 retweets. In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the hijacked hashtag, including Berry,^[2] BuzzFeed,^[7] TheHookMag^[8] and The Daily Dot.^[9]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References