CALIFORNIA: TikTok users are challenging each other to eat cereal — out of someone else’s mouth.

Add cereal bowls to 2020’s “out” list. For some TikTok users, who needs a dish, when you can use . . . a friend’s mouth?

The latest, and possibly one of the grossest, challenges on the social media site involves a person lying prone, with mouth open wide, while a partner pours milk and cereal into the maw and then tries to eat it with a spoon. The #cerealchallenge has spawned dozens of videos of TikTokers attempting the feat, which collectively have been viewed 10 million times, per the site.

Some of the more popular videos include a sister and a brother who squabble as they try it out, and a man who successfully scoops Fruity Pebbles from the mouth of a giggling woman who appears to be his spouse (she posted the clip with the caption “Ran out of bowls, so I did what any wife would do.”)

In what might be the most disgusting example of the genre (and that is really saying something in this context), a young man lies on the floor while an off-screen friend pours milk into his mouth, which is then lapped up by a large dog, all set to the tune of Justin Bieber’s “Yummy.”

Generally, the stunt ends with the person standing in as the “bowl” spitting up a combination of milk and cereal. So some users wear protective gear — shower caps and towels — to avoid a mess. Smart, huh?

It’s more involved (and definitely more of a choking risk) than another dairy-based trend, the popular #whippedcream challenge, which went so mainstream that even Hoda Kotbe and Jenna Bush Hager gave it a try this week on the “Today” show. (That one involves tossing whipped cream in the air from the back of your hand and catching it in your mouth.)

While people on social media have fretted about the dangers of the latest viral trend (stupidity, on the other hand, is a feature not a bug), it hasn’t yet prompted the warnings from health officials that have accompanied some of the platform’s riskier challenges, such as the one where teens dared each other to eat Tide pods. And in more lower-lactose but higher-voltage news, just this week, the “outlet challenge,” in which people partially insert a cellphone charger plug into an outlet, then slide a penny onto the exposed prongs, sparked a warning from firefighters in Massachusetts after some teens attempted the prank at school.
(With inputs from Agencies)