Charlie Charlie challenge
You might remember it as the pencil game, Juego de la Lapicera
This spread through many posts rather than one canonical upload.
2015·The platform era·shocking
A Spanish-language playground game that reached the English-speaking internet through an alarmed Dominican news bulletin.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- the pencil game
- Spread in
- 2015
- Format
- Challenge
- Origin
- No single original
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
Two pencils are balanced in a cross on a sheet of paper marked yes and no. You ask Charlie whether he is there. The top pencil, balanced on a round barrel, moves — because it is balanced on a round barrel — and points at an answer. The game is a version of the Spanish Juego de la Lapicera, played by children for decades.
Its route to virality is the interesting part. On 29 April 2015 an alarmed Dominican tabloid news report about children summoning a demon was uploaded to YouTube; the unintentional comedy of the bulletin, rather than the game, is what crossed the language barrier. Within weeks the hashtag was global and Catholic clergy in several countries were issuing statements about it.
It burned out within a month, as panics do, and left behind a good case study of how a local moral panic becomes an international joke and then a genuine panic again on arrival. The BBC, Vox and others ran explainers whose main finding was that a pencil balanced on a pencil rolls.
Why it is here: it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
Where it came fromWhat we know
This spread through many posts rather than one identifiable original. No copy is held here — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this. It spread through many posts rather than from one identifiable original.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.