The story can be summed up in three quotes:
"I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection..."
-Jonathan Swift, 1729
"@smashmouth can i pay the lead guy to eat like 2 dozen eggs for $20. will meet u in SJ. please reply back if so, i am completely serious"
-fart jon, June, 2, 2011
"OK fans-We accept your egg challenge. If you can raise $10,000 for our favorite charity then it's ON! causes.com/causes/622845"
-Smash Mouth. July 5, 2011
For those not already aware of the challenge made to musical group Smash Mouth here is a quick overview:
On June 2 a Twitter user posted an open request to Smash Mouth which asked the band of musicians to eat "2 dozen eggs for $20." The followers of (Fart) Jon, our new Jonathan Swift, expanded the concept with more tweets including more pledges of money to an unnamed charity. Stipulations for this “#eggchallenge” and variations on the theme continued across multiple online applications. Allegedly Smash Mouth's facebook page was over run with egg requests. Nearly an entire month of egg requests from various people on various platforms has now resulted in Smash Mouth picking up the gauntlet. The official event is hosted online by Causes.com where the website stipulates that "Smash Mouth should eat 24 eggs for the kids," with $10,000 in donations going to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
It all began when (Fart) Jon abandoned trolling the corporate account of claussenpickles in order to welcome newcomers Smash Mouth online. Smash Mouth had just recently secured their twitter page as "Official."
We can track his motives, as he followed up his fateful challenge by bemoaning:
“VIRAL!!!! SEO!! MARKETING!!!!! SOCIAL MEDIA!!!! if you have these words in your twitter bio i automatically know you suck at the internet.”
Apparently, corporations have been steadily migrating towards the boomtowns of Twitter and Facebook, staking their claims on their digital real estate. The result is a very predictable backlash from the creative types who first rolled into town and made these places worth visiting. Plenty of writers have poked fun at the guys trying to “get in on" this twitter thing, but there was something special about this particular request. Maybe it was the visual image of Smash Mouth’s mouth literally full of eggs that tickled the imagination of so many “fans." Whatever the reason, the Smash-Mouth-egg-challengers, have become a potent group.
Fittingly, (Fart) Jon would tweet:
"Crowdsource someone who cares..." how to blow people off in the year 2011.”
Right before his community would comply with this crowd-sourced hazing of Smash Mouth.
Soon after the first shot was fired, other users chimed in with different degrees of sincerity: some people seemed to enjoy poking fun at the nature of celebrity, especially a nostalgic symbol of 90's popular culture, while others seem to be genuinely intrigued at the prospect of seeing lead singer Steve Harwell placing eggs in his mouth I.R.L
On June 4th, Johnny "DocEvil" Titanium posted front page news on Somethingawful.com making what could be considered the first "formal" request to the group. Doc Evil named Steve Harwell as the challenged, stating that the eggs will be provided for in the contest, while offering $20 as payment, and also offering to personally film the process. However, the opening lines which included the words:
"I am begging you. Please, eat the eggs. Eat all the eggs up," which made this plea seem like more joking at Harwell’s expense.
Meanwhile, the egg-leader estimates pledges had reached over $5,000 by June 14th, a dozen days after project was first hatched.
The #eggchallenge also garnered support from an online celebrity. Author and cartoonist Drew of "Toothpastefordinner" fame, offered this tongue-in-cheek chide:
“If people had $$$ pledged for a charity, and all I had to do was eat 24 eggs on video, I'd do it today. Shame on @smashmouth.”
This statement is an insightful observation of the whole #eggchallenge phenomenon. It begs the question: What is the social responsibility of public figures? Are they obliged to throw away their personal dignity at public's beck and call?
Some users turned to making videos, posting taunting egg pictures, or even writing doggerel poems that reference to Smash Mouth’s own work:
“Much time has passed / The mouth is smashed / But of eaten eggs not one / The doom of man / Is now at hand: / To walk upon the sun” tweets Glop Demonius X.
On Jun 20 user SeriousInc attempted to make the challenge serious with this battle cry:
"The @smashmouth egg challenge needs to go to the next level. Need petitions, call radio stations, get charity orgs on board for pledges."
Non-twitter users now knew the Egg Challenge across websites, such as a Yahoo Answers page, a facebook fan page, and a contested edit of Smash Mouth's wikipedia page-all of this while the faithful maintained a steady twitter presence.
On Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 6:46 PM Easter Standard Time Smash Mouth formally accepted the #eggchallenge with this their 6th official tweet:
"OK fans-We accept your egg challenge. If you can raise $10,000 for our favorite charity then it's ON! causes.com/causes/622845"
Various twitter users claimed to have broken down and cried in public at the news of Smash Mouth accepting their challenge; this of course, is more fun. However over a hundred users pledged over a thousand dollars within minutes of the announcement, whether their motives were ironic or not.
User Admiral Baby tweeted that "FUCKTARD IDIOT" and "SLENDER MAN" donated 25 dollars and 50 dollars respectively. Which is of course is the point. The “egg fun,” as some call it, is only beginning. The fact is, these users may be irreverent, but far from irrelevant.
For those wondering about the particulars, Bodybuilding.com forum user Adambomb, posted pictures of his own self imposed 24 egg eating challenge on April 6, 2008. He claims to have eaten 24 extra large eggs in under thirty minutes and according to his calculations the grand total was 1,920 calories, 168 grams of protein, and 4.800 milligrams of cholesterol. Adambomb also adds that,
“[One] Egg has 67% of your daily [Cholesterol] Intake haha"
So, it seems, Steve Harwell has decided to meet Jon’s challenge head on.
*At of the time of this article's publication donations by over a hundred members have reached nearly $2,500, a quarter of the way towards Smash Mouth eating eggs.
MENTIONED LINKS:
http://www.causes.com/causes/622845
https://twitter.com/#!/smashmouth
http://twitter.com/#!/fart
RELATED MEDIA:
The smashmouth facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Smash-Mouth/105620352804209
Sterogum's Smash Mouth SNL skit article:
http://stereogum.com/281902/snl-smashmouth-sketch/news/
Bodybuilding forum's 24 egg eating challenge:
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=106988271
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