Momo Challenge Is Everything That’s Wrong with the Internet

Momo is everywhere…and nowhere

The other night, my wife flipped her iPad screen toward me, flashing me an image of Momo. With its deep-set, marble eyes, black matted hair, rictus grin, and hybrid female/bird body, Momo is a deeply unsettling image. I instinctively turned my head and asked why she’d shown me that nightmare right before bed.

Of course, why should I be spared? The image of Momo has appeared on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, newspapers, online media, and local and national TV. It haunts every corner of media and social media and, according to reports, may be inspiring impressionable young minds to carry out horrifying acts of self-destruction.

Except that’s not what’s really happening here.

Momo is in reality “Mother Bird,” a bizarre Japanese sculpture of indeterminate origin. “Momo” refers to another part of the Momo Challenge origin story. The image originally started appearing on the wildly popular Chinese Momo flirting app where it was shared widely as an example of something they call “Kimo Kawa” or “disgusting but cute.”

However, the Momo mythology didn’t take off, according to Know Your Meme, until 2017 when the image became associated with a WhatsApp number. Why you’d want to call that face I will never…