Momo, a school subject?
A secret class assignment. Great! We had to prepare a 2 minutes presentation on MOMO. Ignorant as I am, I did not know much about it. I recognized the picture, sure, I knew I saw it somewhere... but that was it. I could see how my team-mates started to make all kind of weird faces. They seemed to be a little bit displeased and worried. Not about the assignment itself, but about MOMO’s twisted and dark story.
I had to catch up with them. And Thank God for Saint Google! The whole hysteria about Momo started at the beginning of 2018, when the suicide of a 12-year old girl from Argentina was linked to the WhatsApp terror game. Some other cases from US, Japan and now Europe were connected to the social media "movement". Even so, the cybersecurity expert and other authorities deny that Momo is in any way connected to the unfortunate events (story in full here).
I can see why this topic might make people uncomfortable. First, this game is meant to trap kids and hurt them. As grownups, we are genetically programmed to protect the younger, the vulnerable ones. Second, we fear the unknown. We don’t know exactly who is behind this new trend. Hoax or not, the person/s behind the concept has the clear intention to provoke chaos. Third, no matter our cultural background, our minds were filled with stories of monsters under the bed, in the closet, in the dark or wherever. It’s natural that we connect this dark and uncommon art with our own fears.
The challenge was to put MOMO in an academic context. We got so used with being in a rigid environment and with such heavy topics of discussion, that when asked to forget about our comfort zones and approach a mainstream subject, an automatic reaction of skepticism and rejection surfaced. Of course, the task was fully completed, even if some got uneasy while researching about MOMO.
Taking the good side of the secret assignment and comparing it to other reading experiences for school related activities, we had it easy. Sometimes, when reading teoretical texts you have a clear underatanding of what every individual word in a paragraf means, but when you put them all together, you have no idea what the hell you just read. Sure, we had to find our info sources online so the writing styles were nowhere close. Still counts. At least I had a clear understanding about what we were talking about.😂
I have to confess I got slightly worried by this whole MOMO hysteria. And angry. But more than anything, intrigued. Does that make me a weirdo? I Don't know... But damn, I sure enjoyed working with such a challenging subject.
"Hit me baby one more time" with a new assignment.
"I have to confess I got slightly worried by this whole MOMO hysteria. And angry. But more than anything, intrigued. Does that make me a weirdo?" – Absolutely not! Being intrigued is a must if you ever want to become a researcher. As you explain, the Momo challenge is disturbing and has stirred emotions and discussions in a lot of areas. That alone should make it interesting for a researcher.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, as we found during the discussion, the originating of the challenge on 4chan and subsequent deliberate spread of it to other platforms would be very interesting to delve deeper into. It could give some interesting findings regarding trolls, haters, and other dark sides of the Internet.
MOMO is seriously scary! Even when you know how they do and that sometimes your friends are the ones behind, its still a scary phenomenon. Now, hopefully, kids are aware of it and knows better, BUT it should not be a surprise if a new, similiar yet totally different phenomenon comes to be
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I find Momo itself scary or the concept of young teenagers being so obsessed with being afraid and terrorizing their peers more scary. Momo, Slenderman, videos of terror, what have you, being used to frighten and "sort out the weak ones" or whatever.
ReplyDeleteIs Momo and the like PURELY a thing of the modern age? or have there always lived a scary witch just down the road? "Come on, you're not afraid to go down there and knock on her door, are you?
Chicken."
I think that MOMO-Type-hoax happened before the rise of technology as well. It just wasn't that widespread because there was no easy and convenient way to do so.
DeleteIt would definitely be fun (yes I dare say fun!) to compare millennial-old boogie-man stories and children's scary-prank-games - I don't know what to call it! - to today's Internet-versions of them. Could some of it be unique for the online world? How?
ReplyDeleteOf course there's a much larger potential of feedback and audiences but besides that. Is there a pattern going across the 'old' and 'new'? Is it possibly the reification of fear/the unknown?