A Momo photo from Twitter.
Reportedly created by Japanese company Link Factory, Momo has become a celebrity in the last week for all the wrong reasons. The face at the center of the eponymous Momo Challenge hoax is something of an avian-human hybrid and, undoubtedly, creepy.
That creepiness factor is, in part, responsible for the virality of the challenge, which, according to children’s charities and almost every sane report, was not causing players to self-harm or worse. It’s one of the more bizarre cases of the internet eating itself and causing a needless panic. Police put out strange notices blaming unknown “hackers” for running the game, without any evidence or explanation. Schools have sent warnings to parents. And everyone’s left in a general state of befuddlement at what’s real and what’s not on the Web. Again.
Momo's uncanny visage
But what is it about Momo’s face that's become insidiously lodged inside the psyches of Web denizens? I contacted Francis McAndrew, a professor of psychology at Knox College. He’s researched and written about, among other things, why clowns creep so many of us out. McAndrew even wrote a whole paper titled “On Creepiness.”
McAndrew thinks the reason for any kind of creepiness, not just that espoused by Momo, is twofold. On the one hand, it stems from humans’ inability to categorize something. On the other, there’s the ambiguity of whether something poses a threat or danger to us. “The Momo character freaks people out because it does both of these things,” McAndrew says.
He pointed to the so-called “Uncanny Valley,” where when an object or animal looks much like a human but we know it isn’t, we start to feel revulsion.
“The Momo character has big eyes and a human-like facial expression, so it presses buttons in our brain that make us respond to it as if it was a human. At the same time, we know that it is not human, so we struggle with the discomfort of not knowing how exactly to respond to it. Also, since it is hard to make sense of what it is, we obsess over it as we seek closure,” he McAndrew added.
Thanks to the whipping up of false fear related to the Momo Challenge, the face has also become a potential threat. “However, we do not know for sure how threatening it is or what kind of danger it poses to us, so once again we wallow in discomfort as we monitor it and try to figure it out,” professor McAndrew says.
“Put both of these things together, and it is not surprising that people are getting creeped out.”
Of course, as perturbing as Momo’s visage is, it’s far more concerning that a hoax about children trying to hurt themselves managed to gain so much attention.
