Whamageddon is upon us. The viral trend has had people avoiding Wham's 1986 song "Last Christmas" each holiday season for about 18 years. It's a simple game that has participants across the world hoping they can make it to Dec. 25 without hearing the holiday breakup ballad.
What is Whamageddon?
The game – which can be played by anyone, anywhere – kicks off Dec.1. All you have to do is avoid hearing "Last Christmas" by Wham until Dec. 25. If you make it, you win.
The #Whamageddon hashtag has more than 12 million uses on TikTok, with people sharing videos when they "die" – or hear the song and get sent to "Whamhalla," or the end. Others, however, rejoice that they lived another day without the tune touching their eardrums.
The creators of the game, a group of friends from Denmark, have gone so far as to make an official website to teach others the rules. The one saving grace: Covers don't count. You can hear the versions by Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and Megan Trainor and still stay in the game.
Who created Whamageddon?
Four friends named Thomas Mertz, Rasmus Leth Bjerre, Oliver Nøglebæk and Søren Gelineck came up with the concept about 18 years ago.
"We kind of realized this song was being played constantly, over and over. It was just in really heavy rotation," said one of the friends. "And instead of getting annoyed with it, we decided to make a game out of it and have a little bit of fun."
In 2016, one of the friends created a Facebook page to see if others would be interested in the annual game and it "took off," he said.
He also mentioned that he has made it to Dec. 25 without hearing "Last Christmas" three times – and the most anyone has ever claimed to have made it is five times.
While the four friends made up Whamageddon, he said the idea isn't unique to their friend group. "For years we got emails from a group of Americans, I think out of Berkeley, who play what they would call 'The Little Drummer Boy' game," he said. "And they would get upset with us each year and send like a tersely worded email about us copying them, assuming that we knew about them."
A Danish group called Whamageddon has started a new Christmas game that challenges people to avoid listening to the song "The Little Drummer Boy" during the holiday season. The game has gained attention on social media and has inspired people to share their experiences of avoiding the song. The group has even started selling Whamageddon merchandise and a pub chain in the UK removed the song from its rotation in 2018 to support the game. While some may question the originality of the game, the group emphasizes the fun and shared experiences it creates.
Whamageddon 2023
During a recent soccer game in the U.K., a DJ unintentionally eliminated 7,000 participants from Whamageddon on only the second day of the competition. The DJ, known as Matty, expressed surprise at the seriousness with which people took the game. He had played the song as a joke, thinking it would be amusing to catch out a large number of people who couldn't avoid it, but quickly realized that it was not funny. In an interview with BBC News, Matty apologized to those affected and acknowledged the negative feedback he received on Twitter.
Following the incident, Matty publicly apologized for ruining the Christmas of those affected and expressed remorse for his actions.
