About

Rock Paper Scissors Food Challenge refers to a TikTok trend and internet challenge in which people play rock paper scissors to determine who eats the food while the other has to run a certain distance and return to play it again until the meal is finished. The food challenge went viral in mid-March and early April 2024.

Origin

Although the rock paper scissors hand game has been present in numerous food-related trends on TikTok, an article posted by Dexerto^[1] claims the Rock Paper Scissors Food Challenge is "likely to have stemmed from the dinner date challenge that was going viral in 2023," which consisted on playing the game with a friend or partner to randomly decide the dinner meal.

For example, on April 5th, 2023, TikTok^[2] user @ifilip24 posted a video titled "date night challenge," in which he played rock paper scissors with his girlfriend to decide what food they were eating for dinner. The post (shown below, left) amassed over 755,000 plays and 70,000 likes in a year.

The earliest viral post of the Rock Paper Scissors Food Challenge was uploaded by TikToker @jada_leigh29^[3] on March 20th, 2024, in which she plays rock paper scissors with her boyfriend to decide who eats the burger and who has to run (shown below, right). The post garnered more than 8 million plays and 1 million likes in a month.

Spread

Over the following weeks in March 2024, more couples and friends joined the Rock Paper Scissors Food Challenge as the hashtag "#rockpaperscissorschallenge" accumulated over 14,000 videos by early April 2024.

For instance, on March 29th, 2024, TikTok^[4] user @luvbri_18 posted a video doing the food challenge with her boyfriend (shown below, left), amassing roughly 9 million plays and 1 million likes in a week. On March 26th, TikTok^[5] user @aj_zoenayy joined the trend with her boyfriend (shown below, right), which garnered more than 3 million plays and 262,000 likes in a week.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References