Hands-Free Bubble Tea / Tapioca Challenge

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About

Hands-Free Bubble Tea (#手放しタピオカ) also known as the Tapioca Challenge (#タピオカチャレンジ) is a hashtag used for images of people or fictional characters balancing bubble tea or other drinks on their chest while drinking it, in a similar manner to the #TawawaChallenge. Starting in June 2019, the trend has seen significant spread on Japanese Twitter.

Origin

On June 7th, 2019, the Japanese model @hcupadman uploaded two videos of herself drinking a latte from a cup resting on her breasts.^[1]^[6] The videos received over 1.7 million views and 238,000 views in two weeks, respectively, with one tweet receiving over 18,000 retweets and 48,000 likes in that period (shown below).

Two days later, Twitter^[2] user Strangestone, known for the #TawawaChallenge,^[7] uploaded an image of a woman drinking a cup of bubble tea placed on her breast while checking her cellphone, gaining over 22,000 retweets and 66,000 likes in the following week (shown below).

Spread

A day later, Twitter^[3] artist @_club_3 shared an image of the characters Saber Alter and Jeanne Alter from Fate/Grand Order mobile game playing video games while drinking beverages in a similar manner, getting 12,000 retweets and 46,000 likes in the following days (shown below, left). On the same day, Twitter^[4] user @creamcandy123 posted a picture set of herself doing the pose, gaining 3,000 retweets and 16,000 likes in the same period (shown below, center). On June 12th, Twitter^[5] artist @hiragana_01 uploaded a drawing of a woman doing the pose gaining 3,000 retweets and 17,000 likes in five days (shown below, right).

In the following days, the trend received further spread on Twitter with photographs and fan art posted by users, also spreading to Instagram^[8] and Reddit.^[9]^[10]