About

The Mystery String Challenge is a game and internet challenge in which players take turns pulling on one of a variety of strings tied to paper plates that are threaded through a plastic cup. The plates have prizes of varying worth on them and the player receives the prize they pull. Sometimes, some of the plates have challenges on them that the players are required to do if pulled. The game was popularized on TikTok in August 2021 by the Klem family and spread that year, becoming increasingly popularized throughout 2022.

Origin

On August 20th, 2021, TikToker^[1] and family channel @klemfamily posed a video playing the "mystery string challenge." In the video, five paper plates with prizes including money and food are threaded through a plastic cup, facing downward on the table. The family takes turns choosing a string and pulling on it to see which prize they get. At one point, the father pulls the whipped cream and has to push the plate into his face. The video gained over 4.1 million views in a year. It was also uploaded to The Klem Family YouTube^[2] channel on August 22nd, garnering over 7.4 million views in the same rough span of time (shown below).

Spread

The game became increasingly popularized over the course of 2021 as more TikTokers and YouTubers uploaded videos playing it, including TikToker^[3] @anthonyriveras on October 16th, 2021, garnering over 2.1 million views in a year (shown below).

The game remained prevalent throughout 2022, seeing a peak in interest later in the year. On December 4th, 2022, TikToker^[4] @evaneramagic posted a video playing the game, garnering over 622,000 views in a week (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References