Amanda Cooper shared a new family holiday card online and she probably did not expect it to blow up the way it did because people seemed to notice one tiny detail that set them off. She is a travel and fashion influencer with more than fourteen thousand followers and she posted a close up of the picture to show what they had done as a joke.
She put the image on TikTok where she explained the little prank that everyone had agreed to try out. Even though her mom works hard every year to make sure these holiday cards look perfect she still managed to laugh about it and she said: “I thought it was absolutely hilarious.”
The internet did not feel quite the same because the video went viral fast and pulled in millions of views with tons of comments. Some people said the prank was sad and one person wrote: “This is so disrespectful.”
Another person added: “You came off like a bunch of jerks on the internet! Congratulations.” Someone else said they never had a real family portrait growing up, and they said it hurt to see this kind of thing when they did not even have a family.
There were plenty of people who thought it was funny, though, and they said they liked how Cooper handled it. One person wrote that it was funny and justified, and someone else said they hoped the kids would join the tradition when they get older.
The actual prank in the photo was that Cooper’s siblings hid their middle fingers in the picture while standing next to their kids. It was a big change from their usual routine because their mom normally plans matching outfits and clean poses every year.
Cooper said she just wanted to shake things up a bit and surprise her mom, who always works hard on these holiday shoots. She said the idea came from a group chat with her siblings, where they tossed around ideas until they landed on this one.
She said in an interview that they used a code word to time the joke, and that word was hippopotamus. She said: “So right before the middle finger picture, I called out, Everyone say, I want a hippopotamus for Christmas.”
