The Weird and Wonderful viral Trends of Taiwan

With the cinnamon challenge and all that business regarding the Harlem Shake, you could forgive the West for thinking they were unbeatable when it came to weird viral trends. However, no one has anything on Taiwan, where the internet is seen as a platform to expose the zaniest and most nonsensical trends.

Don’t believe us? Checkout these recent viral trends that have the female population of Taiwan have embraced with open arms.

Plastic Bag Bikinis

This is as current as it gets, as this trend is currently sweeping social media as we write. Buzzfeed and a few other sites have picked up on it, showing young Taiwanese girls wearing nothing but plastic bags that have been shaped into bikinis. Few sites have explained the reasoning behind it though. Of course, there doesn’t always have to be a reason and it isn’t always easy to find where these things began, but in this case we can trace it back to a couple of Taiwanese models.

Teddy Captain and Belle Xie simply asked themselves if they could fit their itsy-bitsy torsos inside a plastic bag. These bags were small, but were they big enough to wear and to preserve the girls’ dignity at the same time? Well, as it turned out the answer was in the affirmative, and after the girls posted their photos online, they kick-started a trend. Most of the plastic bags come from 7 Eleven, as there are countless stores in Taiwan carrying that brand, so it almost makes you wonder if they had anything to do with this trend, and if it isn’t just a piece of incredibly ingenious viral marketing.

To date, the people posing in plastic bags have been young, slim and female, but we look forward to the comedy moments when beer-belied middle-aged men get involved and take this trend to a whole new level.

Belly Button Challenge

Another strange trend involving young women, this one apparently hailed from the US, where a study reported that you were probably slim and/or fit if you could wrap your arm around your back and touch your belly button. Sounds strange? Well, it was. It was also pretty pointless, but that didn’t stop thousands of women trying the “challenge” out for themselves and posting the results online. The hash tag for Belly Button Challenge had 21 million hits across the East in a matter of weeks, showing just how far this trend spread.

Heart-Shaped Bangs

After Kendall Jenner broke an Instagram record for the most liked picture, when she fixed her hair into a heart-style, women across Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China tried to replicate her. Cue thousands of pictures of women with bangs and every other part of their hair shaped into love-hearts. A harmless trend for sure, but a strange and pointless one as well. Kudos to the girls for doing this though as it takes some effort to craft the perfect heart-bang, perhaps proving that too many of them have too much free time on their hands.