Shoulder Cookie

About

Shoulder Cookie is a photo fad that involves placing a cookie on one's shoulder and trying to eat it without using hands. The game was inspired by a photograph of a young woman attempting the challenge that has been circulating the Internet since 2007.

Origin

The earliest known photograph depicting the Shoulder Cookie challenge was submitted to the Russian message board Trinixy^[1] on December 19th, 2007. Later that same day, the image was reposted in a thread on another Russian message board Otvali.^[2]

While the identity of the girl in the photograph remains unknown and despite its memetic roots on the Russian web, the photograph is believed to have been taken in the United States, as suggested by the American flag standing in the background.

Spread

Throughout December 2007, the image continued to circulate around Russian message board communities^[3][4] and soon reached the English-speaking web in the form of demotivational posters in early 2008, making several appearances on internet humor sites Reddit, FunnyJunk^[5] and LOLWow^[6], as well as other special interest message board sites like MustangWorld^[12] and MustangMafia Forums.^[13]

On April 27th, 2009, the single topic blog Shouldercookie.com^[9] was launched on Tumblr to promote the game and curate photographs of people trying the challenge, beginning with the one that started it all. In the following days of April, the blogger behind ShoulderCookie.com began promoting the website elsewhere online by creating a Facebook page^[7] and submitting a link to Digg^[8], albeit without much success. The single topic blog remained largely unknown until months later in June 2009, when a link to the site was submitted to the internet culture site BuzzFeed.^[11] On August 31st, 2009, the site was named the Tumblr of the Day by the food blog Eat Me Daily.^[10]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References