How To Get The Hand Gesture Filter & Get In On Instagram's Latest Challenge

Among other things, the boredom of staying indoors has fueled an influx of new and entertaining social media challenges. From complicated dance challenges on TikTok to pushup challenges on Instagram, people are finding fun ways to keep themselves and their friends preoccupied while they practice social distancing. A newer addition to these is Instagram's Hand Gesture Challenge. Using only an AR effect and your hands, you can see if you have what it takes to beat it — just remember, it's a little harder than it looks.

The Gesture Challenge on Instagram is a fun little game where you use your own hands to copy a set of hand emojis that are shown on your screen. It seems easy enough, except you have to imitate the gestures quickly and on-beat to a song. And if you don't get it right the first time, you'll have to try again with a brand new set of randomized hand gestures.

You can find the emoji hand AR effect on the Instagram account @i.m.noel. Once you're there, click on the smiley face next to the grid icon in the middle of the screen, select the Gesture Challenge effect, and watch the filter's creator totally nail the challenge. If you want to give it a go after seeing how it's done, just tap the "Try It" button at the bottom of the screen.

When you open up your own Stories camera and select the effect, you can't see what gestures you're going to be given until you actually press and hold Record. In other words, you get zero time to practice. Once you do this, the song "Lalala (ilkan Gunuc Mix)" by Y2K will play while the filter randomizes a set of nine hand gestures for you to imitate. This might be especially hard if you're like me and need a few seconds to separate your fingers down the middle. Once you get it down though, post it to your Instagram Story for other people to see. You might even want to tag friends and nominate them to try it out as well.

The Gesture Challenge has gained traction with more than 1,000 posts under the #gesturechallenge on Instagram. Even famous celebrities like the Biebers, Joe Jonas, and Sam Smith have participated (with some more successful than others).

If you do decide to try your hand at Instagram's Gesture Challenge, make sure that along with the friends you want to nominate, you tag the creator, @i.m.noel as well. They often repost videos of others trying out the challenge, so it could be satisfying to get some recognition after you finally get all the gestures right.

The Gesture Challenge is a fun way to not only take part in a viral trend, but also be more interactive with your friends and followers on Instagram. Plus, I don't know about you, but sitting down and throwing up hand gestures sounds a lot more doable to me than dropping down and doing pushups.