Drake fans are jumping out of cars for his #InMyFeelings challenge. The National Transportation Safety Board is reminding you not to do that.
Weird things happen on the internet. The latest is the #InMyFeelings challenge.
The #inmyfeelings challenge is the latest of these things. The trend -- which has been imitated by celebrities from Will Smith to Ciara -- went viral after online personality Shiggy posted a video of his dance to Drake's song "In My Feelings." Within two weeks, more than half a million Instagram users had posted their own renditions. The video was widely shared (because ... well, who knows why things go viral.) At some point, there was a hot dentist involved. And Congress. And Drake was rating people’s performances.
Its current iteration, for whatever reason, involves people jumping out of a moving car to dance in the street. (In the original video, Shiggy dances in the street, pretending to steer a car while Drake sings, "Are you riding?". He is being real extra. I guess people on the internet started taking videos of themselves being extra to Drake’s song, until we reached critical mass of Peak Extraneity, and the challenge began to literally involve jumping out of a moving car to dance in the street.
Sure, you could definitely die. But for a retweet, that’s apparently a risk we are willing to take. Some people are even sharing "funny" videos of themselves being hit by cars.
The federal government is getting super annoyed with this, and recently the National Transportation Safety Board joined a growing list of law enforcement agencies who have publicly reminded you how annoying this behavior is. Several places, including Spain, Egypt, India, and several cities in the United States, have literally informed the public that they will charge you thousands of dollars in fines and even send you to jail for the #inmyfeelings challenge.
Echoing this sentiment, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a statement reminding people that jumping out of a moving car is a bad idea, and you should please, please stop doing it.
“Hopping out of a moving vehicle or jumping into lanes of traffic to show your dance moves is foolish and dangerous – to you and those around you,” Nicholas Worrell, Chief of Safety Advocacy at the NTSB, said in a statement.
Because apparently, you didn’t listen to your mom when she told you that a thousand times.
The organization made several tweets about how really, really over this they are, reminding the public that, you know, “Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death in the U.S.”
The NTSB statement.was actually incredibly savage -- and totally not undeserved.
"We have studied the particular challenges faced by teen drivers, and we have long focused on graduated driver licensing laws in part to gradually introduce young and novice drivers to the roadway environment," said Worrell. "Now, it appears that certain drivers and passengers are intent on being introduced to that environment in a more literal way."
Guys, we are seriously not helping our parents’ stereotypes about our generation when we purposely run into traffic because they internet told us to.
Serious question: which is worse, this or the whole Tide Pods obsession? Seriously, weigh in with your take in the comments.