Taking the Cinnamon Challenge Online

Kids have been daring each other to do stupid stuff since the beginning of time, but only recently have social media come along to enhance—and help share—the experience. A recent craze sweeping teen circles is the Cinnamon Challenge. The goal is to gobble up a teaspoon of cinnamon and swallow it all in 60 seconds. It’s not as easy as it sounds. While statistics are not available, it is safe to say that most contenders fail. Success, however, isn’t really the point. The fun part comes from capturing it all on a laptop or phone and putting it on YouTube or Facebook, where friends and strangers can watch and revel in your pain. YouTube features some 30,000 videos of teens and 20-somethings embarking on the challenge, usually only to end up choking, coughing, gasping, and spitting. Many of these videos have been viewed millions of times, and some are helpfully labeled: WARNING PUKE.

Where content is free, an entrepreneur is usually trying to make money off of it, and that person has emerged in the form of Scott Rosenbaum, 32, who is seeking to monetize the orange “dragon breath,” as he calls it, often emitted by challengers. Rosenbaum is the proprietor of Cinnamonchallenge.com. He “randomly bought” the domain name back in 2007 after hearing of the challenge, he says, which was around even when his parents were young. For years, the domain name wasn’t his priority. His big business is RentAFriend.com, a site people can use to hire a platonic friend to go to the movies or the gym with. Rosenbaum charges friend-seekers $24.95, which entitles members to scan lists of 417,000 people who have signed up to be friends-for-hire.