(ConservativeInsider.org) – Since the birth of social media, people have been coming up with challenges for others to carry out. While some of them have led to awareness of charitable causes, such as dumping a bucket of ice water over your head for ALS research, others have proven dangerous and resulted in numerous deaths. Now, there’s a new trend going viral on TikTok, and it’s raising concern.
“Death diving” is the name of the latest trend to garner millions of views on the social media platform notorious for its short video clips. This challenge involves people belly flopping into water from extreme heights, trying to maneuver into a dive at the very last second.
The joys of TikTok means you can come across absolutely insane foreign practices such as the Norwegian sport of dodsing, or death diving, where you basically belly flop into the water (but try to turn it into a dive in the last second). A marvel to watch (wait to the end) pic.twitter.com/SXc3t3aKm3
— Tom Knowles (@tkbeynon) December 22, 2022
Despite its name, the participants aren’t really looking to die; they’re engaging in an extreme sport that originated in Norway back in the 1970s. It’s called dødsing or “death diving,” and has been around for more than 50 years. It’s a rated sport, where judges issue points based on three criteria: the run-up, the air time, and the landing. In fact, all of the top 10 ranked athletes in the sport hail from Norway, which isn’t surprising.
The emergence of social media and the athletes posting videos of themselves carrying out the dives have led to the recent fascination. However, there’s concern these clips may inspire others to create a TikTok trend involving death diving and spark a slew of injuries or worse, actual deaths. There’s always a risk with belly flopping where landing wrong can cause bruises and in extreme cases, internal injuries that could result in death.
Experts have posted tips and tutorials to help those who want to give it a try. According to the New York Post, one professional stunt guy, Anders Rox, who is ranked ninth in the world in the sport, says “it’s all about going out and having fun,” but safety is paramount.
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