What Is 'Matilda Challenge'? Latest Twitter Trend Is Fun, Not Dangerous

After the “Tide Pod,” the “Zoom,” “Hot Water”and the most recent “In My Feelings” challenges – all of which infamously put the lives of social media users in danger – the internet has finally come up with a challenge that is not harmful and entirely fun, the “Matilda” challenge.

As the name suggests, #MatildaChallenge derives its idea from the 1996 children’s fantasy movie “Matilda,” where the main character is a genius child Matilda, played by actress Mara Wilson, who uses her incredible powers of telekinesis to escape her cruel family and school principal.

The challenge is based on one song in particular from the movie, called the “Little Bitty Pretty One” where Matilda demonstrates her magical mental capabilities in a peppy dance number. Every inanimate object she pointed at began reacting without her touch – lamps started flickering, card machine started dispensing cards which flew around her, potted plants started moving and so on.

Here is the video to refresh your memory:

An increasing number of people have started recreating this iconic music video and posting it on Twitter and YouTube. Most of them are similar – users would be dancing to the tunes of the song while they pointed to curtains and picture frames, which would appear to move on their own.

But of course, since Matilda's telekinesis is not a common power that people possess, the social media users in most cases would require the help of their friends to move the items timely. While the “helping hands” are supposed to refrain from appearing in front of the camera, lest they risk breaking the illusion, some of them don’t quite manage to achieve the finesse needed for the job.

And when there are internet trends, there are parodies of those trends:

Wilson, who played Matilda in the movie, also gave a shout out to the fun challenge that one can play with their peers, on Twitter:

She also pointed out the video which seemed to have started this trend – a YouTuber named Beto Pedraza recreated the Matilda music video and uploaded it on the social media platform Musical.ly, last week.

However, while people did not operate under the hashtag “Matilda Challenge,” there are videos dating back to May where Twitter users have been seen acting out scenes from the popular children’s film. Hence, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the trend actually started.

The places where the trend reportedly went viral first were Central and South America. But since then, it was picked up by thousands of Matilda fans across the globe.