Social media trends can seemingly come from anywhere these days. Thousands of trends pop up on social media every day, but only a select few go viral. Something as trivial as an Instagram bug can go viral if it is interesting enough.
The challenge trending right now is simply titled pgtalal. Exactly what the name means remains unclear, but the word has gone viral on Twitter and is also trending on TikTok. We will explain the pgtalal challenge for you to decide whether it’s worth participating in.
The first pgtalal highlight on Instagram produces an Arabic phrase and freezes your iPhone.
A search for pgtalal on Instagram reveals a random profile with over 26K followers. The pgtalal challenge requires you to click on the user’s first story highlight.
If you do, an Arabic writing appears before your iPhone crashes and freezes. Users popularizing the challenge have probably fallen victim to it, and they want others to fall for it as well.
A popular TikTok video posted by @partyshirt confirms that the trick works. “Well guys, my phone is out of commission for how long? I have no idea,” one of the video’s creators says. “He’s on an Android now until he learns how to behave with an iPhone,” the other creator adds.
You can restore your phone’s normal functions by resetting your phone
“There is absolutely nothing you can do about this except reset your phone,” the TikTok video advises.
Before you click on pgtalal’s highlights, keep in mind that you will have to reset your iPhone. To do so, press and quickly release the volume up button, press and quickly release the volume down, and finish by pressing and holding the sleep/wake button.
So far, it appears that the trick only affects iPhones. Other operating systems are seemingly immune to the pgtalal hack.