Lauren Kaled
The internet has taken a simple video and made four random teenage boys icons of Tiktok. The internet community has taken the original video and made a viral meme of it and in turn has made these boys popular beyond belief among teenagers, proving that the web can make anyone famous. These kids now have collaborations with big name businesses such as Marc Jacobs. The boys have been able to make some money off of the number of followers they have by using Cameo, an app that allows users to pay to get direct video messages from celebrities.
After Tiktok account @islandentertainment was hired to film videos of a girl’s sweet 16 birthday party, they posted a video of a group of boys dancing and singing along to the commonly made fun of Kanye West song “Carnival,” sparking online memes and fictitious scenarios about the boys. This party has been named the “Tiktok Rizz Party” referencing a flyer that was placed on Instagram user @23ryan_’s car dashboard last year promoting an event.
The video, which has 61 million views and counting, features four teenage boys clad in formal wear, having a great time at the party. After the video was posted and gained popularity, people began giving each boy a nickname based on their appearance. Tomato Boy, White-Shirt, Group Leader, and Turkish Quandale Dingle are some of the nicknames that were given to the boys. Tomato Boy is named that because his face in the video is red, White Shirt is creatively named for wearing a white button-down, and Group Leader is named that because he is in the center of the video’s frame and seems to be leading the rest of his friends in the dance. Another video posted on @islandentertainment’s Tiktok shows Dingle and Group Leader dancing with each other. This video caused countless edits of the video and many people making jokes about the boys having crushes on each other, especially as the video seems like Dingle is trying to impress Group Leader. The boys have even played into this trend, posting more videos with each other and talking about the fans shipping them together.
The Tiktok Rizz Party has taken Tiktok by such a storm to the point that I cannot even scroll on my For You Page without seeing a few edits of the boys. The boys’ individual Tiktok accounts have skyrocketed with followers following the popularity of their meme. There are even videos of their peers at school imitating them in the party video. This ultimately proves that posting any video of yourself that can get a reaction out of people can make you famous for life.
