In the video, they were all clutching firearms of various caliber.
Pistols and shotguns hung frozen in the air, their blunt ends aimed at various people, who remained as still as, well, mannequins. One man was prostrate under the back of a car, as if for cover, the barrel of his shotgun peeking out. Another hid behind a plastic trash can, flimsy protection if this were a real battle.
From one angle, it appeared to be a Madame Tussauds Wax Museum exhibit — a reenacted modern-day gunfight in rural Alabama involving at least 19 guns and 22 young men, frozen in time, scored by the pulsating beat of pounding rap music.
It was a version, albeit an edgy and ultimately inadvisable one, of the mannequin challenge — that Internet craze of filming a scene of stark-still people, generally with the song “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd playing over it. It has become so popular that everyone from Taylor Swift to NFL players to Alabama inmates have recorded a version.
Those inmates might be able to film a version with a larger cast now, as two of the men in the firearm-studded mannequin challenge have, perhaps unsurprisingly, been arrested; one of them for — you guessed it — possessing guns.