Mainers aren’t buying the latest social media craze: Trying to summon demons through the Internet

tweet charlie

More than 2 million people and counting have used the social media hashtag #charliecharliechallenge, referring to the Ouija-board-like game in which people try to contact demons and post their results on Twitter, Instagram or other platforms.

For those who aren’t part of that crowd of 2 million, the “game” basically goes like this: The player separates a paper into four quadrants, with two featuring the answer “yes” and two featuring “no.” The player then makes a cross of two pencils on the X-Y axis and asks the mysterious spirit/demon “Charlie” a yes-or-no question. A pencil then is supposed to magically pivot to either a “yes” or “no” quadrant, guided by the unseen hand of Chuck.

As the story goes, you have to ask Charlie permission to stop playing, and if you don’t say “good bye” to Charlie after he grants that permission, he starts to haunt you.

According to the Washington Post, the “Charlie” folklore goes back generations in many Spanish-speaking communities, and only took off in the world of Internet urban legends recently, after a local Dominican TV news station in late April broadcast an alarmist story about a “Satanic” game gaining popularity in province schools. A teenager in Georgia then posted her game on Instagram with the now wildly popular tag #charliecharliechallenge, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The Post goes on to report that, according to Internet lore, Charlie is said to be the spirit of a child who died before his time, although the stories vary on how or when this tragedy occurred.

So what are Maine teenagers and social media trendsetters asking Charlie about?

Not much, really.

Either Mainers are really late to this twisted party or, perhaps more hopefully, they’ve got better things to do than use social media and pencils to contact demons. Try searching Twitter for Maine users who have used the tags #charliecharliechallenge — or trendy alternatives like #charliecharlie or #charlieareyouthere — and you find just a small handful of results, almost none of which at this point actually include a video of the game being played.

Most of the Mainers who have bothered to use the hashtag at all seem to be questioning this craze. Wrote @MEGIPRODUCTION, in Tweet that summed up the Maine social media sentiment nicely: “Why is everyone doing the #charliecharliechallenge?”

It’s a fair question. The British newspaper The Independent explained how the game might work in the cases in which the pencils actually do move: “[T]he pencils have to be so finely balanced on top of each other that even the slightest movement from a breath or slightly tilted surface will push it around. … The arrangement of pencils that the game requires means that they’ll always move, because it’s just not a natural position for them to be in.”

So, predictably, when you ask for Charlie’s opinion on something, you’re really just getting an arbitrary answer from your own breath or uneven table top (my kitchen table is named “Fred,” for what it’s worth, and he thinks I should get a burrito for lunch).