The "#CharlieCharlieChallenge" has been tweeted about more than 1.6 million times and apparently owes its brief halo of fame to an Instagram post by a central Georgia girl, according to the Washington Post.
"'Charlie Charlie,' a game/Internet urban legend of sudden and inexplicable popularity, surged to the top of the global social media charts this weekend after kicking around on the Spanish-language Internet for much of eternity," the Post's Caitlin Dewey wrote Tuesday.
The game goes like this: Draw four quadrants on a piece of paper, writing "YES" and "NO" in opposing corners, balance two pencils atop one another in a plus-sign formation, and then ask questions, Ouija-style, which are answered by the spirit of "Charlie" — either a dead child or a Mexican deity.
Dewey wrote the game has been growing in exposure since April, following a "very alarmist (and unintentionally funny)" news report in the Dominican Republic, but buzz seems to have shifted with one Instagram post, when a Georgia girl posted a video Sunday of the #CharlieCharlieChallenge.
"As of this writing, #CharlieCharlieChallenge has been tweeted more than 1.6 million times. More people are Googling 'Charlie Charlie' than virtually any other news event ... That hashtag was, apparently, all the kids needed," Dewey wrote.
The user, __k.luh, appears to be a girl living in Byron, according to her public social media accounts.
"Charlie Charlie" has been picked up around the globe, occasionally breathlessly, following in the tradition of teen-centric #BostonBlizzardChallenge and charity-centric #IceBucketChallenge.
Good news, according to Dewey: The challenge basically amounts to screaming teens, and a healthy dose of self-mockery, as opposed to injured teens in Internet challenges gone wrong.
"Charlie makes a killer case study in virality and how things move in and out of languages and cultures online," she wrote.
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