Here's how to know if the latest social media trend is actually an internet hoax

Social media trends are nothing new. Neither are challenges (remember the Ice Bucket Challenge of 2015?). It makes total sense to automatically assume that every time a new trend pops up, it must be as widespread and "viral" as it seems. But this is the internet. Almost nothing is ever as it first appears.

Many of the trends and challenges you hear about online or on the news might actually be hoaxes -- fake or exaggerated events that go viral even if people aren't actually participating in them by the masses. It turns out there's one easy way to tell if the latest trend is actually just an internet hoax: search for it online.

Back when the Chase Bank Glitch went viral, a TikTok content creator and social media researcher posted a video explaining why the "glitch" was actually a hoax. In the video, they used the Tide Pod Challenge as an example of another viral "trend" that was almost entirely fake. Everyone was talking about the dangers of eating Tide Pods. But it turned out no one was actually eating Tide Pods as part of an online challenge.

This was because there wasn't actually any evidence of people actually participating in the challenge. The same thing happened with the Chase Bank Glitch. When you searched for content on TikTok about the glitch, it was nearly impossible to find videos of people actually participating in the viral trend.

And that's how you know when something is an internet hoax: When there are endless amounts of content ABOUT the event, but no content showing people actually participating. If you search the latest keywords, and all you see are people talking about the trend, it's not real. The idea of the trend or challenge has gone viral -- not the challenge itself.

Stay tuned for the article I'll eventually write about whether or not the Ice Bucket Challenge actually raised money for ALS (I bet you can already guess the answer).