If you’ve been too worried about the Brexit shenanigans this week to keep up with your endlessly updating Instagram feed, then there’s a chance you’ve missed the #10YearChallenge.
The concept is simple; you post a picture of yourself 10 years ago, next to one of you now, and squeal with delight as the gushing comments roll in about how you haven’t aged a day/how amazing your transformation has been/how incredible you’ve looked for a decade.
First came the conspiracy theory that the challenge was created by Facebook so they could use the data to improve their facial recognition technology. The idea was sparked by a tweet by author Kate O’Neill who wrote; ‘Me 10 years ago: probably would have played along with the profile picture aging meme going around on Facebook and Instagram. Me now: ponders how all this data could be mined to train facial recognition algorithms on age progression and age recognition.’
She expanded on what she calls her ‘semi-sarcastic’ tweet with a Wired article about whether or not Facebook really could be using the challenge to mine data. They have denied starting it, but does that mean they won’t use the data?
Once we were all reasonably reassured that the challenge wasn’t a sinister move by Facebook, an alternative version of the #10YearChallenge popped up as an attempt to take us away from vain self-promotion and focus on the real issues.
Celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan, Leonardo DiCaprio and footballer Mesut Ozil have been posting images of polar bears getting thinner and ice caps melting with captions such as ‘The only #10YearChallenge we should care about.’
While the original challenge could do with being a little less self-centred, we’re not certain that this alternative version does anything to impact the important issues either. Unless there is real action to accompany the social posts - like ALS’ Ice Bucket Challenge of 2014 where people pledged to donate money, and the charity received £32 million within weeks - it’s just another example of virtue signalling.