DURBAN - Today marks day 50 since the country went into lockdown. South Africans have gone through different phases of lockdown.
Phase one: Panic shopping for toilet paper, water, and hand sanitizer.
Phase two: Working and learning from home, Zoom meetings. Google hangouts with your friends, coworkers and catching up with family members you haven’t seen in many years.
Phase three: Online workouts, taking part in social media challenges and getting creative in the kitchen.
Phase four: Virtual House parties
Here are a few social media challenges that trended:
#EggChallenge: This challenge occurred as a result of lockdown and involves swallowing a raw egg, followed by sugar and then taking a shot of rum or brandy
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Apr 14, 2020 at 10:02pm PDT
#DontRushChallenge: Where people had to change their looks from crusty to crisp in split seconds.
undefined#Thetoiletrollchallenge: For the sports lovers that are bordering on madness. Essentially you had to film yourself keeping a toilet roll in the air like a soccer ball, then nominate your friends to do the same.
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A curious phenomenon took place in early April, online search patterns showed that most people took an interest in baking. According to Google Trends, banana bread has been the most-searched recipe worldwide followed by homemade pizza.
According to Google, as South Africans entered the second week of the 21-day national lockdown the search term ‘
alcohol ban South Africa
’ spiked 500percent. During that week, high levels of search interest were also seen for the terms ‘how to get alcohol’ and ‘homemade alcohol’.
Related search queries for the term ‘homemade alcohol’ include ‘homemade beer recipes South Africa’, ‘can homemade pineapple beer make you drunk’, ‘homemade gin’, 'homemade alcoholic pineapple beer’ and ‘how to make alcohol at home fast’.
Virtual house parties hosted by DJ Shimza and PH called Lockdown House Party started from March 27, every Friday at 6pm and Saturday midnight. The innovative duo launched the event online and it attracted over 134,000 streams via Twitter in just six hours and eventually reached almost more than a million people across different platforms. After the success of their #OnlineQuarantineParty, they have taken the vibe to television in order to reach more people.
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