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.
