About

The #WhatTheFluffChallenge is a social game in which people, essentially, play peekaboo with their dogs. The owners hold a sheet in front of their bodies, and simultaneously drop the sheet and hide before the sheet hits the ground. This creates the illusion to the dog that the person has vanished.

Origin

One of the earliest examples of the game being played online was published by the Tumblr ^[9] page babyanimalgifs on March 1st, 2018. The video (shown below), captioned "his reaction has me crying," received more than 75,000 notes in four months.

On June 17th, 2018, Instagram ^[1] user @siberianhusky_jax published a video of a woman playing "What The Fluff" with their dog. In the caption, the user challenged other followers to try the game as well. They wrote, "What the fluff?!😲 〰️ Try this with your pet. Post it, tag me and add #WhatTheFluffChallenge / #WhatTheFluff I’ll be sharing my favourite ones." The post (shown below) received more than 87,000 likes and 1.5 million views in less than one week.

Spread

That day, the Twitter ^[2] account @AMAZlNGNATURE shared the Instagram video, spreading the video and challenge to the platform. Additionally, Tumblr ^[4] user tastefullyoffensive posted the video, receiving more than 4,200 notes.

On June 18th, Instagram^[3] user @mayapolarbear published a version of the challenge, adding the caption, "Her reaction is priceless 😂 – #WhatTheFluffChallenge Thanks @siberianhusky_jax for the idea!" The post (shown below) received more than 348,000 likes and 8.5 million views in four days.

Over the next week, people on Instagram and Twitter posted their own variations on the challenge, hoping to elicit a reaction, of any kind, from their pets. Additionally, compliations of tweets and posts began appearing on YouTube (examples below).

Several media outlets covered the challenge, including The Daily Dot, ^[5] Independent,^[6] Metro^[7] and more.

On June 21st, Twitter^[8] published a Moments page about the challenge.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References