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Hold still! The mannequin challenge is freezing the internet

These picture-perfect poses are the latest craze across social media.

Alfred Ng Senior Reporter / CNET News
Alfred Ng was a senior reporter for CNET News. He was raised in Brooklyn and previously worked on the New York Daily News's social media and breaking news teams.
Alfred Ng
2 min read
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Twitter user @98diggs shared this video of his entire high school getting in on the challenge.

Screenshot via Alfred Ng/CNET

The latest viral challenge is a pretty hard one -- you gotta stay still and do nothing.

These short freeze-frame clips have taken the internet by storm, with the appropriately named "Mannequin Challenge." Here's how to make your own.

Grab a few of your friends and find a good spot. Most videos circulating social media have been in classrooms, school hallways or in parks. The first tweet with the Mannequin Challenge hashtag was from October 26, inside a classroom.

The clip started from a group of students at Edward H. White High School in Jacksonville, Florida, with the kids posed on top of a table, frozen in the captured moment, as still as statues.

It's probably easiest to just stand around, but you're not going to get any social media love without putting some elbow grease into it. Just take a look at the Army West Point Gymnastics team's Mannequin Challenge for some inspiration.

The more people, the better. Entire high schools getting together to freeze throughout the entire campus. Even teachers are getting in on the fun.

It helps if you're famous, or a professional sports team. The New York Giants, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Milwaukee Bucks and many other teams have already jumped on the trend.

The camera should be the only thing moving in the frozen scene, showing all the still "mannequins" like a freeze frame from "The Matrix."

Watch this: CNET accepts the 'Mannequin Challenge'

Put some music to it. The most popular soundtrack to the Mannequin Challenge has been "Black Beatles" by Rae Sremmurd, who has also jumped in on the trend.

From planking to "Batmanning," the internet has been obsessed with challenges where you stay still. Like the Mannequin Challenge, they're easy to do, and people get to be as creative as they want with it, adding their own personal touch, growing the meme's legend.

These challenges -- which can seem more like flash mobs at times, tend to have a lifespan of a week to a month, depending on how fast it gets overdone -- remember the Harlem Shake?

But the Mannequin Challenge might be just like "The Wave," an audience participation game at sports games that quickly caught on in the 1980s. Like the statue-like figures in its videos, the Mannequin Challenge might not be budging anytime soon, Altimeter's Principal Analyst Charlene Li said.

It's easy to put together, and fun to throw in personal touches -- the perfect formula for a viral challenge, she said.

"It's about these really cool flashpoints of catching the moment."