A Guide to Children’s Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: What Is a “TikTok Rizz Party”?
Youth culture is full of mysteries this week: Why would anyone drink a mixture of oats and water instead of eating a bowl of oatmeal? Why does everyone care about anonymous teenagers at a party? Is anyone on TikTok psychic?
What is Oatzempik?
The hottest trend on diet TikTok this week is Oatzempic . Touted by some as the key to rapid weight loss and getting that bikini figure you’ve always dreamed of, the oatmeal diet is essentially mixing oatmeal with water and lime juice and eating it for breakfast. It has a catchy, relevant name, but does this diet actually help people lose weight? If you follow the breakfast replacement plan with disgusting oatmeal, which has about 160 calories and a lot of fiber, you’ll consume fewer calories than if you ate bacon, eggs and toast. But as our own Beth Skwarecki points out , “If you don’t eat a lot of food because you’re ‘full’ from eating 160 calories, you’ll end up on an unhealthy low-calorie diet.” And nutritionists largely agree that oatmeal is not a food that people tend to stick with long-term: It’s better to eat a bowl of oatmeal rather than gulp down an oatmeal smoothie first thing in the morning.
Viral Video of the Week: TikTok Rizz Party/Carnival Boys
This week’s viral TikTok Rizz Party video, also known as “Carnival Boys,” features a group of teenage boys dancing to Kanye West’s “Carnival” at Jillian’s Sweet 16 party, according to the video’s poster . Nothing unusual happens in the video. The subjects seem like cute enough kids doing normal teenage things, but Rizz Party has gone extremely viral, earning over 56 million views on TikTok alone since it was posted on March 10. It went so viral that it gave birth to a new academic discipline. Rizz Party analysts. There are over 32,000 response videos on TikTok, and people online are poring over every pixel of every frame, like “TikTok Rizz Party” is a Zapruder film. They gave each video participant a nickname, created backstory , character motivations and lore , created full skits , and let it influence their personal philosophy , all based on 17 seconds of randomly filmed video. At this point, it seems like the kids in the video themselves are embracing their newfound internet fame with good humor, calling themselves fake names and playing along with the knowledge, but it must suck for the kids who were considered the less… popular Rizz boys.
As for why this video, why now, it could be anything. But I think an entire generation spending literal years at home during a key formative period of their social lives has likely had a profound impact on their collective psyche, and this video (along with much of contemporary youth culture) is an expression of that. Widespread fascination with a mundane moment of light-hearted social fun may indicate a desire to share such an experience, even if expressed through ridicule or irony. (This is the dissertation of my research, which I hope will allow me to obtain a PhD in rhizology.)
IShowSpeed and Logan Paul vs. The Rock and John Cena: WrestleMania as a Battleground for Generations
There was a clear generational divide moment at Wrestlemania XL this weekend. If you’re over a certain age, the main event, the title match between Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes, featured the most amazing surprise appearances, with The Rock and John Cena both appearing on opposite sides. ( The match presentation is so funny it has to be seen to be believed.) But if you’re under a certain age, the only surprise appearance that mattered on Sunday’s show was YouTuber IShowSpeed , who showed up wearing a bottle of blue Prime and trying to help a co-worker -streamer Logan Paul in his match against Randy Orton and Kevin Owens. After Orton pulled Paul out of the ring, IShowSpeed was immediately sent to the media table by RKO. This moment immediately went viral : half the audience laughed, and the other half asked: “What to show now?”
The birth of a conspiracy theory on TikTok?
I’m fascinated by why people believe stupid things, and social media gives us the opportunity to see how nonsense can become a widely held belief in real time as it happens. Now a TikTok post has gone viral that provides an example of what happens in the early days of conspiracy belief. TikToker Tristian Galindo posted a video this week in which he discusses a TikToker he remembers watching back during Covid. According to Galindo, this “missing creator” made a series of videos in which he accurately predicted the future, passing on his information to a mysterious group called the “Highmen” and then disappeared, promising to return in 2029. “I’m not kidding, that’s all this person said until now,” Galindo claims.
Even for most conspiracy theorists, this isn’t enough to be taken seriously, but there is information in the comments that seems to support Galindo’s story. Other TikTokers not only remembered the poster, but also (presumably) tracked it down. Mo Oatman (“The Mothman” for old-school conspiracy theory fans) was indeed a TikToker who stopped posting in 2022, and he made predictions for the future, including saying Covid would spread to major cities in the early days of the pandemic. If you want to believe, that’s probably enough. But if you’re a skeptic, you can actually watch Othman’s video and learn that he doesn’t mention anything about “the top” or any other specific things that Galindo “remembers.” He also never made any predictions that came true (except for the prediction about the spread of Covid, which was also predicted by literally everyone who knew how viruses work). what happened was that we had to wear masks.)
Time will tell if Galindo’s conspiracy theory catches on and joins popular slogans like “We didn’t go to the moon” and “Pizzagate,” but his video has been viewed six million times in the last week alone, so at least At least this is a godsend. audience. (For the record, no one can see the future because it hasn’t happened yet.)