Virally trending “challenges” can be judged on a few key metrics: Is it an actual challenge, or just an excuse to be a jerk? Does it often end somewhat badly, or can it literally kill you? Finally, is it roughly as silly as trying to stack Cheerios on your sleeping baby?
On all these scores, the hard hat challenge is a success. It’s not especially dangerous, nobody ever seems to succeed, and it’s definitely the right amount of stupid. There are some variations, but for the most part, it involves a construction worker launching his hard hat with a shovel so that it (theoretically) lands snugly on his head.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfq9Yr_NXmo
Yeah, you’d definitely want a few beers in you before you tried this—it’ll make your embarrassment easier to take. Oh, and flipping your hard hat by hand appears to give you better odds.
Construction Workers Take the Hard Hat Challenge Despite all the laughs and light head injuries, not everyone is cool with putting hard hats to the exact opposite of their intended use. “Of all the things that people would want to launch at themselves,” wrote Shane Hedmond on the blog Construction Junkie earlier this year, “you’d never think it would be the ultimate symbol of construction safety. But, as long as there are people on this Earth, stupid things will continue to happen. Hopefully they learned their lessons.”
Forgive us for hoping they didn’t. They just need to keep at it! They’ll get it eventually, see?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIGKOd-jwK8
Or… not!
Good luck to all the hard-headed folks out there who won’t quit trying this until their foreman catches them at it.