Face your fears: New cockroach challenge not for faint-hearted

Cockroaches, a germaphobe's mortal enemy. 

Now imagine putting one of them on your face, all for a social-media challenge. 

That was what Burmese Facebook user Alex Aung did when he started this challenge, to dare his Facebook friends to do the same. 

Unexpectedly, his post started a new social-media challenge in his country. 

[embed]https://www.facebook.com/alex.aung.96592/posts/417918502372542?[/embed]

Aung's post on April 20 went viral, amassing 18,000 shares and almost 500 comments at the time of writing this article. It shows a cockroach resting on his face and him posing with a smug smile. 

The viral post managed to spark a competition amongst fearless netizens, who tried to one-up each other with their own take on the dare. 

This guy shook things up and left a gecko on his face.

One even went as far as putting a cockroach in her mouth.   

Another person thought using ordinary roaches was too mainstream and proceeded to post this monstrosity. 

Gross.

While other social-media trends like the 10-year challenge and Snapchat-filter challenge may be relatively harmless, this cockroach trend is definitely one you want to stay away from. 

For one, cockroaches are known as pests for a reason as they thrive in unhygienic places and cause food contamination. Known as carriers of millions of bacteria, they can cause harmful health effects such as diarrhoea, food poisoning and even allergies when you're bitten by one. 

While it seems that the cockroach challenge is an easy way to gain likes, there are definitely cleaner ways to chase clout. 

kimberlyfoo@asiaone.com