The viral 'cheese challenge' involves throwing cheese slices at your baby's face and WHAT?

There’s a new viral challenge on the internet and it involves babies…and cheese slices.

No, it’s not like the ‘Cheerio Challenge‘, which saw parents stacking the ring-shaped cereal in towers on their sleeping baby’s face. The #CheeseChallenge is literally adults throwing cheese slices at a wide-awake infant.

The point of the exercise is to make the cheese stick to the child’s face – and to amuse people who have a very low threshold for amusement. It began when Twitter user @UncleHxlmes uploaded a video, with the caption, “just cheesed my lil brother”. The video was deleted after it attracted 258,000 retweets and 758,000 likes.

The highlight of my day was watching this video of someone throwing a slice of cheese on their baby…. what’s wrong with me and why am I still laughing? pic.twitter.com/ZHUB421SG2

— madi (@Madison_Combs1) March 1, 2019

With viewing and reach statistics like those, the video was bound to be copied and become the latest viral challenge – and that’s exactly what’s happened on social media.

In each video, when a baby is ‘hit’ with a cheese slice, the results are predictable. The babies are shocked and bemused, as anyone would be, at an object in their face, taking them by surprise and momentarily blocking their view.

#cheesedchallenge #cheesechallenge pic.twitter.com/TFNLt0k8K6

— Xavier (@_parsonsxe) March 2, 2019

:( pic.twitter.com/PJ09LH9raU

— ørlandø (@Orlandonava1204) February 28, 2019

The trend soon extended to involve older children, too.

#cheesechallenge why my cheese ain’t stick like errbody else videos ???? pic.twitter.com/oyZmZmUzFt

— Kimo-James Tipoti (@Teddy2James) March 2, 2019

As one would expect, there’s been significant backlash to the challenge, because not everyone finds entertainment at the expense of children amusing.

when the fuck did throwing slices of cheese at your baby’s face become a trend

— aspen holly (@aspenkennedy_) March 3, 2019

These poor babies, what a waste of cheese too.

— Dustin Genereux (@DustinGenereux) March 2, 2019

The most notable criticism came from actor, model and mum-of-two Chrissy Teigen, who tweeted, “I love a prank as much as anybody but I cannot get myself to throw cheese at my adorable, unsuspecting baby who has all the hope and trust in the world in me.”

I love a prank as much as anybody but I cannot get myself to throw cheese at my adorable, unsuspecting baby who has all the hope and trust in the world in me

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) March 3, 2019

Hopefully, the backlash will mean the viral trend will become, ahem, unstuck very soon.

What do you think of the #cheesechallenge? Tell us in the comments below.