The Mannequin Challenge is a participatory video trend in which a group of people are shown posing frozen-still for the camera while music is playing in the background.
While one of the earlier instance of this Mannequin Challenge can be dated back years earlier, it was on October 26th, 2016, that a Twitter user that goes with the name @pvrity___ uploaded the earliest known viral instance of the participatory video trend.
In the video, the post shows a group of students from Edward H. White High School in Jacksonville, Florida pretending to be mannequins in a panning shot.
In the following week, the tweet received about 5,000 tweets and likes, while the trend began circulating on the internet, with more people attempting the take the challenge.
The hashtag #MannequinChallenge was used on both Twitter and Instagram.
#manequinchallenge SHARE‼️ RT‼️ pic.twitter.com/k1BqR6iZ1p
— yani (@pvrity___) October 26, 2016
The next month on November, the hashtag challenge had evolved into a full-fledged social media trend among high schoolers and college students, spawning a number of similar "living portrait"-style videos.
Many of the videos use the song "Black Beatles" by Rae Sremmurd playing in the background
On November 3rd, Rae Sremmurd made their own contribution to the meme by participating in the challenge on stage during their live concert in Denver, Colorado.
On their Twitter account, the American hip hop duo uploaded the video, which received 47,000 retweets and more than 50,000 likes in just 24 hours of posting.
The Mannequin Challenge was phenomenal as it was covered by a number of major sports news sites, news media and blogs.
News outlets have compared the Mennequin Challenge videos to bullet time scenes from science fiction films such as The Matrix, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse, Lost in Space and Buffalo '66.
Politicians like First Lady Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, former Managing Director of World Bank Group and Indonesian Minister of Finance, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, as well as others have also participated in the challenge.
Celebrities and musical artists who participated included:
Beyoncé, Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland, Adele, country singer Garth Brook, Britney Spears, DJ Marshmello, former Beatles member Paul McCartney, Simon Cowell, Nicole Scherzinger, Louis Walsh, Sharon Osbourne and Dermot O'Leary, along with The X Factor UK live audience and dancers, Taylor Swift, Bon Jovi, Ellen DeGeneres, James Corden, Blac Chyna and Rob Kardashian, LeBron James, Robert DeNiro, Tom Hanks, Diana Ross, Rita Wilson, Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and more.
Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has also been made to participate during the awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House
Due to the many uploaded videos, as well as the way the shooting makes the Mannequin challenge interesting, the footage have been used to advance AI in better predicting depth.