Contact Admin. Like a Magic 8-Ball , the game is played by teenagers using held or balanced pencils to produce answers to questions they ask. Teenage girls have played Juego de la Lapicera for generations in Spain and Hispanic America , asking which boys in their class like them. Originally described on the Internet in , [2] the game was popularized in the English-speaking world in , partly through the hashtag CharlieCharlieChallenge. In an early version of the game, two players each hold two pencils in the shape of a square, pressing the ends of their pencils against the other player's.
The two pencil game involves crossing two pens or pencils to create a grid with sectors labelled "yes" and "no" and then asking questions to a "supernatural entity" named "Charlie. The first question everyone asks by speaking into the pencils is "can we play? The top pencil is precariously balanced on a central pivot point, meaning that it can easily rotate on the pivot due to slight wind gusts, or the breathing of players expecting the pencil to move.
In Spain, teenage girls have played Juego de la Lapicera for generations in school playgrounds and sleepovers to find which boys in their class found them attractive. According to Caitlyn Dewey of The Washington Post, this game is valuable as an example of cross-cultural viral trends:.
Charlie makes a killer case study in virality and how things move in and out of languages and cultures online. You'll notice, for instance, a lot of players and reporters talking about the game as if it were new, when it's actuallyβand more interestingly, I thinkβan old game that has just recently crossed the language divide.
In May , The Racket Report , a parody website that describes itself as "not intended to communicate any true or factual information," [14] posted a hoax article claiming that "mysterious" deaths had resulted from playing the Charlie Charlie Challenge. In May , four teenage girls were sent to a hospital in Tunja and quickly released with a diagnosis of mass hysteria.
