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Photos of people lying face down on the ground — surrounded by luxury bags, shoes, and sometimes wads of cash — have gone viral on Chinese social media.
Experts say it's common for Chinese netizens to express their feelings with photos on social media
The bizarre trend — dubbed the "flaunt your wealth challenge" — has generated more than a million posts on Chinese social platform Weibo in the past two weeks.
China's growing army of social media influencers have played a role in popularising the meme, sharing images of themselves participating in the challenge with their followers.
Dressed up in their finery, the influencers usually pose as if they've just fallen head first out of a luxury car and spilled their most valuable possessions onto the pavement.
The trend has puzzled many an outside viewer as to what the appeal may be, and the increased attention has not been an all-round positive experience for the participants.
Safety and purpose of trend called into question
Last week, one influencer had a friend shoot a video of her falling out of a car onto a pedestrian crossing in Taizhou, a city in China's eastern Zhejiang province.
The video picked up more than 50,000 views on video sharing platform TikTok, according to Chinese state media People's Daily.
A Chinese influencer posed as she fell out of a car on the crosswalk with her luxury goods scattered on the floor.
Pictures showed the woman, identified only by her surname Chen, lying face down on a pedestrian crossing with luxury items worth thousands of dollars scattered around her.
The post attracted more than a thousand comments, with Chinese netizens questioning whether it was safe for the woman to be posing in the middle of the road.
Local police later issued Ms Chen and her friend a small fine for parking illegally.
The global internet trend started in July in Russia after a DJ posted a photo of himself pretending to fall out of a private jet on Instagram.
Since then, more than 100,000 Instagram posts with hashtags such as #fallingstars and #fallingstars2018 have been posted around the world.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-23/chinas-flaunt-your-wealth-challenge-goes-viral/10404202
