It began as an offbeat gag shared for some likes and retweets. Now the Twitter user behind the absurd trend of throwing cheese on babies is stepping away from the viral monster he created.
Some are calling it mean-spirited; others are comparing it to child abuse. But many are just laughing at the bizarre trend that took over Twitter this weekend, dubbed the "cheese challenge," which had parents, grandparents and siblings everywhere tossing slices of cheese on babies' faces.
After uploading the original video to Twitter on Thursday user @unclehxlmes found himself at the epicenter of the controversial craze that quickly began spreading like wildfire across the social media site.
Like the thousands of copycat videos that followed, the original six second clip begins with a slice of cheese being held in front of the camera before being tossed on the on the face of the unsuspecting baby.
While some outlets have reported @unclehxlmes as the brother or the father of the baby in the video, he says he is neither and the origin of the video is unknown.
When the trend took off, though, he deleted the tweet, saying things had gotten "way out of hand" in a follow up explanation. With requests coming in from news outlets to use the footage in broadcasts, he decided it was time to take it down out of respect for the family involved in the video.
But it was already too late; the craze had taken over Twitter, and babies everywhere found themselves with a face full of cheese.
And pretty soon no one was safe.
Although the damage was mostly done, people applauded @unclehxlmes's decision to take down the tweet.
Hopefully, now things will go back to normal, and we can resume dumping buckets of ice on ourselves instead.
