JANUARY & 10-YEAR CHALLENGES: WHAT KIND OF COOL WILL WE THINK OF NEXT?
Another January, another Internet challenge.
My weary - albeit apathetic - response to the performative nature of the viral challenges that begin each year is usually an exasperated eye-roll.
And as I’ve lived in France now for the last 10 years (which makes me almost French), that eye-roll essentially comes with the most French of sounds: pfff
As time goes on, my indifference changes - first to annoyance, then to weariness, and then to apathy once more.
Given the fact that viral challenges are (usually) lighthearted and fun, you’re perhaps inclined to ask, ‘Mario, why the disdain?”
Well, apart from them being absolute and mindless distractions - a game of ostrich, and more so during these troubled times - I’ve always felt we could find better use for our collective energy. Plus, I’ve never been one to follow the crowd. Maybe it’s my Taurean energy. Or the mere fact of my being Jamaican. In fact, I can still hear my mother’s voice when she thought I wasn’t thinking for myself: “Monkey see, monkey do?!”
Moreover, January’s viral challenges are often rehashed ideas, made pretty and “new” by hashtags and a fresh coat of moniker paint. Case in point, 2026’s “2016 challenge” bears a striking resemblance to 2019’s #10yearchallenge, which itself was a spinoff of 2014’s #gloupchallenge, and the many similar iterations before. And seriously, if you’ve participated in any of the aforementioned ones, how many of these do you really need to do in a lifetime? Asking for a friend….
Moreover, January’s viral challenges are often rehashed ideas, made pretty and “new” by hashtags and a fresh coat of moniker paint.
Plus, with the boom of AI - and yes, speaking as a self-proclaimed conspiracist - I can’t help but wonder what kind of data-training these endlessly rehashed ideas signal, and more pointedly: who benefits?
My yo-yo attitude is perhaps best explained by the 2012 Cody ChesNutt song - from where this article also gets its title - What Kind of Cool (Will We Think of Next), in which the RnB crooner chides and accuses about the distressing and (seeming) non-progressive state of Black men and women, notably in 20th and 21st century America. In that, despite being the innovators of ‘cool’ and some of those endearing and enduring moments of pop culture, they’re (we’re) stagnant in the things that really matter - ownership of our ideas, for example - and in sum underperforming at our potential and “begging to be paid.”
In the 5-minute-long anthem, he muses:
Know how to walk, know how to ride.
Know how to stay fly...
But what we don’t know is that ain’t gonna be enough.
The poignant refrain then teases:
What kind of cool will we think of next? To HIDE behind...
Not much seems to have changed in 2026 - six years after the world vowed to change. Except now, that ChesNutt’s 2012 ‘unaware’ Black is now a metaphor for the unconcerned millennial and Gen-Z of our time - more attuned to viral tends and social media nostalgia than they are at wanting to right a world that is gravely ill.
A few years ago, at the start of the year, an acquaintance of mine, Anna, travelled around Asia for 8 months, simply as a dare to herself of what was possible with a Jamaican passport. Last year, I successfully negotiated my release from a job in which I felt I was shrinking, to do things “my way”, in a sort of way Frank Sinatra sang about. And while not everything needs to be announced - or even performed for the world - those are the ten-year challenges I want to see more of.
Instead of another glow-up photo, let’s ask ourselves: Are we braver, more conscious, more upright? Or, collectively, how have we evolved as people and as a country, and are our respective Governments doing the people’s work?
Because if we must keep challenging ourselves, the challenge should be more substance over virality.
Otherwise, we’re left with the same question ChesNutt posed over a decade ago on January 1, 2012:
What kind of cool will we think of next… to hide behind?
The Effrontery is an op-ed column examining culture, power, taste, and contradiction - calling out irrationality, complacency, and performative thinking with clarity, wit, and zero filter.