The Ubume in the Momo Challenge
"Such ghosts appear during the nighttime, and when they make a commotion during broad daylight, this is truly something to fear."—Konjaku Monogatarishū
“As horrendous as history has been, geohistory will probably be worse, since what had remained quietly in the background up to now--the landscape that had served as the framework for all human conflicts--has just joined the fight. What was a metaphor up to now--that even stones cried out in pain in the face of the miseries humans had inflicted on them--has become literal.”—Bruno Latour
In 2018, a photograph of the sculpture “Mother Bird” was uploaded onto the online platform Creepypasta, a website dedicated to original horror fiction. [that gave birth to Slenderman in 2009, perhaps the most infamous of all viral hoaxes.] Effects artist and author of Grotesque Girls, Keisuke Aiso created “Mother Bird” out of rubber and natural oils, and when she began to rot, he disposed of her parts (Reiko). That might have marked the end of the sculpture, but it was just the beginning of Momo.
Shortly after that initial 2018 post, rumors emerged in Latin America about an online challenge in which that photograph of “Mother Bird,” now called “Momo,” was said to appear on WhatsApp and Facebook where she would supposedly lure children into joining a suicide pact. Other stories claimed Momo popped up in children’s programs like Peppa Pig or game-play videos like Fortnight on YouTube. Still others said the challenge spread to Snapchat. In the United States, the rumor escalated on February 26, 2019 when it caught fire on Twitter when a tweet from Wanda Maximoff cautioning parents about Momo went viral. It gained traction again on Instagram when Kim Kardashian warned her 129 million followers about Momo and asked them to “Please monitor what your kids are watching!!!” (Sakuma).
The child-specific threat posed by Momo struck a nerve. Shortly after these posts, local authorities advised parents to increase online supervision; schools reminded parents to be vigilant; and news agencies recommended parents warn their children about the frightening images they may find online (Lewis). In the midst of such chaos, the legitimacy of the threats seemed to be of little concern. However, once some of the initial anxiety began to die down, national media agencies began to report they were unsure as to whether any Momo-related suicides had actually taken place. Rather than warn their children about Momo, parents were now recommended to ignore her entirely, as those who shared the viral hoax could inadvertently encourage children into participating in the trend ironically (Lorenz).
The Momo Challenge is one of many viral hoaxes in recent years. From eating tide pods to committing suicide for the Blue Whale Challenge, parents seem to hear about a new digital threat to their children every day, and while these challenges typically have no or very little founding in reality, the fear they cause certainly does, particularly for parents who did not grow up in a digital world. In a study on online conspiracy theories, data scientist Alessandro Bessi writes how our interconnected world coupled with our unprecedented acceleration of scientific progress has “exposed the society to an increasing level of complexity to explain reality and its phenomena” (459). Because many of us are not literate enough to make sense of such complexity, it can be easier to blame boogeymen like Momo for the issues we face online.
While Momo may feel like a product of the digital age, were frightened parents to look into her background, they would find she is far from a contemporary invention. Inspired by the ubume, Momo has lived for centuries at the intersection between reproduction and fear. But who has the time for such research when children are at risk? That impulse for immediacy is what makes viral hoaxes so dangerous. By providing individuals with an obvious target they can control, viral hoaxes create a distraction that prevents us from ever gaining true agency (Campion-Vincent 5). As writer at The Atlantic Taylor Lorenz says in her article on the Momo Challenge, it is not Momo parents need to focus on, but platforms like YouTube that are perpetuating the harm.
Such platforms find an invisibility in digital environments that allows them to hide the threats they pose both online and outside. In 2019 (the same year Momo gained her international notoriety), our planet saw: one million species on the brink of extinction; a crisis in the oceans driven by plastic pollution, overfishing, overheating and acidification; key natural ecosystems reduced to almost half their size; insect populations crashed; the biomass of wild animals fallen by 80 percent (Harvey). A leading factoring contributing to this crisis is our relationship with technology. Our planet and technology have integrated so thoroughly, they have created an entirely new sphere—the technosphere. An accumulation of humans’ technological objects and our interactions with them, the technosphere includes piles of e-waste, unpaid or underpaid workers in mines, toxic pollution, wasted water, and ecological destruction (Gould 4), and it is now as central a fixture of the earth as the lithosphere (earth’s rocky foundations), the hydrosphere (earth’s water), and the cryosphere (frozen polar regions and high mountains) (“The Unberable Burden”).
These conditions sound impossible to ignore, and yet, that is largely what we do. As Rob Nixon describes, environmental harms generally unfold as a means of “slow violence”: “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violent at all” (2356). Because of their lack of immediacy, corporations have largely succeeded in diverting our attention onto topics like the economy, the effects of which we’ve been taught to see as urgent.
Only after a surge of ‘natural’ disasters in more privileged regions—like the fires that ravaged California and Australia—did climate change gain some of the spectacle necessary to attract our attention. In a survey conducted during some of the 2019 California wildfires, three-quarters of those who reported the science of climate change has become more convincing credited recent extreme weather events for changing their views (“Is the Public Willing”). And yet, even with this awareness, we still predominantly perceive technological growth as the way forward. Why? Perhaps it has to do with the hidden infrastructure of such technology. “People think that data is in the cloud, but it’s not,” said Jayne Stowell, who oversees the construction of Google’s undersea cable projects. “It’s in the ocean.” Nearly 750,000 miles of cable already connect the continents, which American tech giants have started taking control of (Satriano). The cloud alone uses more energy than most countries (Gould 4), and yet, its very name—“the cloud”—highlights how ephemeral and nebulous we regard our digital lives. Especially when we are distracted by tangible monsters like Momo, the technosphere and the consequences it poses do not feel actualized enough to earn our attention. As a result, tech giants can feel safe to play the role of the hero and offer us solutions we can buy, a response we have been long conditioned to enjoy.
Of course, not everyone can afford to buy themselves a sense of security. In the last National Climate Assessment, “older adults, children, low-income communities, and some communities of color [were said to be] often disproportionately affected by, and less resilient to, the health impacts of climate change” (“Summary Findings”). While age may be the primary influence affecting the immunities of the first two demographics, the disadvantage of the latter two is socially-constructed and amendable by those with “biopower,” Michel Foucault’s term for how the sovereignty determine who “to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die” (“Society” 1446). This biopower gives individuals the ability to shape how others live in society. Whether they are pushing for affordable healthcare or the deregulation of fossil-fuel usage, we are all affected by their decisions.
As it is, Donald Trump, a person with some of the greatest biopower, dismisses the dangers of climate change. In response to the climate assessment, Trump says in an interview with The Washington Post: “As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it...One of the problems that a lot of people like myself have, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers” (Dawsey). Despite a production team of more than 300 federal and non-federal experts, and a review-process including external experts, the public, the Federal Government and an ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), Trump chooses not to believe because that belief allows him to prioritize what most benefits him economically. And because of his biopower, no matter how much we disagree with his choices, we will still be harmed by them. Following the assessment, Trump has only made his position more clear, pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement and proposing a 2021 budget that would cut funding to the Environmental Protection Agency by 26 percent. Trump is and has long been a beneficiary to our consumer culture—the very culture we need to regulate if we are to respond adequately to climate change.
And what exactly does this need for regulation have to do with Momo? On the surface, perhaps nothing. But we can no longer continue to rely on our surface-level interpretations, particularly given that in the early months of 2020, as this thesis is being completed, we face some of the lived consequences of that lack of regulation. As the pandemic COVID-19 strikes, a virus we have never seen before attacks the entire planet both physically and economically. We are told to stay home, to wear masks, to keep distance from one another while society as we know it falls apart. Amongst all this uncertainty, it should come of no great surprise to hear we bred another viral sensation: the amabie. A yōkai said to appear at the onset of an epidemic, like Momo, the amabie poses a solution in its distraction to the greater crisis. Unlike Momo, however, the amabie does not accomplish this through fear, but hope. She is a figure to pray to in a time in which our fear is tangible enough.
We need this hope, and yet, we must not allow it to distract us. The scale of the COVID-19 is one we have never before seen, and by that, I mean it is one we have never before faced. From the hate crimes against Asian Americans to the low-wage service workers forced to risk infection to the disproportionately affected Black Americans, the virus has lifted the curtain on pandemics that have long infected our societies. And while the identities may vary slightly based on country and region, the gap between those with biopower and those considered disposable has never been made more clear. That is why we cannot simply “return to the way things were,” nor can we listen to those promising that we will. No, that is a past that leads to a future of devastation. Rather than return to it, we must look to the areas we have been conditioned not to see: the countries we pollute with our e-waste, the internet freeways we install along our ocean floor, and most importantly, to the past where we will see again and again that, while the ubume haunting our shadows may be the easiest monster to face, those most treacherous are the ones directing our light.
