Since November 27, 2017, various media have been describing the “Ko Challenge phenomenon,” and there are also status reports about it on Facebook.

Popular sport: beating up pensioners. According to the media, a “knockout challenge” would be rampant among young people; according to the Hamburger Morgenpost, there are two videos about it. You learn in the Hamburger Morgenpost that in these two videos, young people ask seniors for directions and then suddenly hit them.
These attacks were filmed and sent via Snapchat, later filmed by third parties and distributed on other portals (including YouTube and Facebook). We saw a video on Facebook and it confirmed the content of the simply despicable knockout.
We haven't been able to view the second video yet. If you look at all the other media reports on the topic, they refer to the article in the Hamburger Morgenpost, which probably also coined the term “Ko Challenge”.
image
In addition to media reporting, there is also “Facebook reporting”, which once again does not take the truth too seriously and prefers to rely on emotions: The content is reproduced here, which is also described by the Hamburger Morgenpost:

PLEASE SHARE!!!
The new “popular sport” in Germany – beats the old German fare –
young people stop a pensioner and ask him for directions.
Suddenly one of them swings out and hits the old man in the face, who then falls over like a felled tree... Horrible videos are currently circulating on the Internet. “Ko-challenge” – that’s what this disgusting phenomenon is called. How long are we going to allow this to happen without the slightest resistance?

The problem, however, lies in the visual implementation, because this photo does not show either of the two affected seniors.

Zurich, 2009

The picture shows Hans W. from Zurich. He was beaten by an unknown person in 2009 and subsequently lost his sight ( compare ). This photo has nothing to do with an alleged challenge, nor is it current. Presumably, due to a lack of authentic illustration, an image was simply used for this status report that was intended to be symbolic without being marked as a symbolic image.

Media criticism

The creativity in reporting is just as amazing: How did you come to the conclusion that this would be a challenge? If we look at classic social media challenges, they have recurring elements:

  • There is a more or less clearly defined task in the form of a challenge (-> Challenge).
  • This task must be mastered by the person challenged.
  • After successfully completing the challenge, the person being challenged becomes the challenger themselves and nominates at least one other person.
  • If possible, a challenge should go viral and have as many participants as possible.
So the question is, which of these classic characteristics really apply to the two beating videos that, according to media reports, were originally shown on Snapchat? Snapchat in particular, with its short-lived content, is less likely to create viral content. We also saw the corresponding video on Facebook and don't see any elements in it that suggest a viral challenge. In the video, no other people are more or less directly encouraged to imitate this act.

In our opinion, the term “challenge” may have been used rather misleadingly at this point and is just as inappropriate as a description of the two disgusting attacks, as is the background image with a picture from 2009.


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )