One Finger Selfie Challenge

About

One Finger Selfie Challenge is a photo fad in which the participant takes a nude mirror selfie of oneself while covering the reflection of the private parts by placing one finger in front of the camera lens. The risque photo challenge went viral after it was picked up by Chinese Weibo users in November 2016.

Origin

On April 11th, 2015, Japanese Twitter user @okataiko tweeted a picture of a woman's nude mirror selfie where she's hiding her private parts with one finger.^[1] According to an internet archive service^[2], the post had earned more than 4,000 retweets and favorites within its first 12 hours prior to its removal and was also covered by several weblogs.^[3] In addition, a Chinese user responded to him that his post also became quickly famous on the Chinese-speaking web via the Chinese social networking service Weibo.^[4]

Translation:

This selfie must be genius.

Spread

On August 16th, 2016, Malaysian Chinese artist Sky-FreeDom (Japanese: スカイ) uploaded an illustration of the Love Live! Sunshine!! character Chika Takami taking a nude selfie in front of a mirror with her private parts covered by a finger (shown below).^[5][6]

On November 22nd, 2016, Japanese Twitter user @9fgF retweeted Sky-Freedom's illustration, asking if the pose was actually possible (tweet since deleted). The tweet accumulated over 4,880 retweets and 4,700 likes in the following week, prompting a handful of other Twitter users to respond with pictures of themselves participating in the challenge.^[7] The photo fad on Twitter was subsequently picked up by Chinese internet outlets in the form of image compilations.^[8][9]

Translation:

Could someone try if it's actually possible or not?

Davison's Video

On November 27th, 2016, the first tweet acknowledging the fad by Westerners came from Brazilian Twitter user Vinícius Curi^[10] who posted a compilation of photos and coined the term "1 finger selfie challenge." On the same day, YouTube user Davison uploaded a tutorial video with her take on the challenge (age-restricted). It gathered over 670,000 views in the following week.^[19]

The video itself brought attention to the fad, leading to several news pieces on the phenomenon^[11][12][13].
Official Tumblr ^[14], Twitter^[15] and Instagram ^[16] pages were also launched.

Criticism

On November 30th, French Huffington Post writer Claire Hervé posted an article about the phenomenon, noting that a fair amount of people following the fad were intimidated by the nude and public aspects of it, showing Instagram users partaking in the challenge by flipping their middle finger to their mirror while being fully clothed, or photographing their fingers up close for it to take the entire picture^[18]. Another article from Teen Vogue^[17], issued November 28th, also pointed out how the fad may encourage body-shaming, inviting strangers to comment on one's figure while rejecting various non-standard body types that may not pass the challenge.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References