The Milk Crate Challenge is the latest dangerous internet challenge

Don't do it.
By Elena Cavender  on 
The Milk Crate Challenge is the latest dangerous internet challenge
Step aside Tide Pods, there is a new dangerous internet challenge. Credit: Shutterstock / Steele S

The Olympics may be over, but our thirst for watching people test their strength and agility apparently has not been quenched.

The #cratechallenge is the latest viral internet challenge and the latest way to get seriously injured. Seriously, don't try this at home.

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The milk crate challenge has participants scale milk crates stacked like a mountain with a seven milk crate-tall peak. While seven milk crates may not sound very tall, this challenge leads to very spectacular falls.

Not only do participants in the challenge topple onto the ground beneath them, but they often hit all the crates on their way down! Watching these videos is not for the faint of heart.

Participating in this challenge is an easy way to go viral, the hashtag #cratechallenge had over 75 million views on TikTok before the app disabled it through search. However, there are still videos all over TikTok and other social media apps like Twitter and Instagram.

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TikTok user @juiceellison posted multiple videos of people participating in the milk crate challenge in a park. As in almost all the milk crate challenge videos, his videos show people delicately climbing up the milk crates before they inevitably fall.

This video has over 240,000 views and over 8,000 likes. Credit: screenshot: tiktok / juiceellison
Ouch! Credit: screenshot: tiktok / juiceellison

Don't get any ideas, but there have been a couple of successful milk crate challenges. The most iconic being a woman who successfully completed the challenge in heels.

The milk crate challenge is not only a spectacle on the internet, but has drawn in-person crowds. On Monday night there was a milk crate challenge gathering at Sara D. Roosevelt Park in Manhattan which drew a crowd of around 100 people according to attendee Nate Bradley.

Bradley, a 21-year-old NYU student, heard about the event through word of mouth and said it was mostly young skater kids and college-aged adults in the crowd. "Everyone was super excited and into it, they would hype people up crazy when they made it," Bradley told Mashable over Instagram DM.

"Whenever someone fell everyone would look away a bit but then laugh it off and make someone else go up," continued Bradley.

Watching these videos leaves us with a lot of questions, but we are mostly asking why participate and where are you getting all the milk crates?

UPDATE: Aug. 24, 2021, 4:01 p.m. EDT Update with quotes from Bradley.

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Elena Cavender

Elena is a tech reporter and the resident Gen Z expert at Mashable. She covers TikTok and digital trends. She recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in American History. Email her at [email protected] or follow her @ecaviar_.


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