Vlogger Who Sparked Outrage By Urging Followers To Darken Their Skin To ‘Deep Chocolate’ Says She Doesn’t Know What Blackface Is

The thirst for Youtube views and Instagram likes is real.

A beauty vlogger who tried to make the ‘chocolate challenge’ a thing has rightly faced the wrath of social media users. 

Vika Shapel posted a picture on Instagram of herself and a friend with half their faces covered in ‘chocolate.’

Shapel posed with a friend and even photoshopped their eyes to be brown instead of blue on the darker sides of their faces.

She ignorantly called it ‘the chocolate challenge’ in her caption. But shocked social media quickly called her out for encouraging blackface.

The vlogger who lives in Vancouver, Washington, was completely taken aback by the backlash and admitted she didn’t even know what blackface was.

‘I simply wanted to see how I looked in a deeper skin tone,’ Shapel told Yahoo Beauty.

‘I wasn’t aware of the whole black-face concept before people began commenting it on the photo.’

‘I would like to apologize to people that were hurt or offended by my post, and it won’t happen again.’

Shapel who is originally from Ukraine, captioned her picture calling the coming video, ‘the chocolate challenge’. 

She wrote: ‘Something fun is coming to YouTube, idk if there is a challenge like this but we haven’t seen it so Im calling it The chocolate challenge!’

‘Come watch us transform into deep chocolate skintones from our pasty pale.’

Social media users swiftly reported the post and video and criticized her in comments on different platforms.

Some people straight out called Shapel a racist. 

One person perfectly put the backlash into context writing: ‘Why?! What do I have to do to convince people that my skin tone is not a trend/a mask/a makeup challenge/ a new concept for entertainment?!’

Shapel has since shut down her social media sites. Her Twitter handle has also been deactivated.

She has taken down all the videos from her YouTube channel and her Instagram profile is now private.

Shapel told Yahoo Beauty that she might return to social media, but probably not for a while.

‘My accounts were deactivated due to overwhelming hateful responses.’

‘I wasn’t an active social media user before; it was just whenever desire sparked, so whenever I have that, then I will come back.’