TikTok Dabloons

Last updated

TikTok Dabloons are a fictional currency and internet trend on TikTok which started circulating around the social platform in November 2022. [1] The "currency" circulates around the app using photo slideshows containing a cat offering it to the user, as well as cat "merchants" selling fictional food, housing, clothing, etc., which can be bought using the currency using an "honor system" making the users track their net worth through various methods such as writing on a whiteboard, notebooks, and spreadsheets. It also has its own fictional economy which has "dabloon" counterparts of the IRS and government to control "dabloon inflation". [2]

Contents

Etymology

Spanish 4-doubloon, or doubloon of 8 escudos, stamped as minted in Mexico city mint in 1798. Obverse: Carol.IIII.D.G. Hisp.et Ind.R. Reverse:.in.utroq.felix. .auspice.deo.fm. Doubloon.jpg
Spanish 4-doubloon, or doubloon of 8 escudos, stamped as minted in Mexico city mint in 1798. Obverse: Carol.IIII.D.G. Hisp.et Ind.R. Reverse:.in.utroq.felix. .auspice.deo.fm.

The word "dabloon" comes from a purposeful misspelling of the former currency called a "doubloon", a Spanish gold coin worth around four Spanish dollars. [3] [4]

Problems

Many of the currency's problems came from people that offered lots of dabloons to viewers (over 1,000). Because of this, many viewers became unrealistically rich and eventually it caused hyperinflation.

Thanks to the inflation and people continuing to give massive amounts of dabloons to people, many started creating "dabloon police" accounts. If people see a video where the creator gave over 100 dabloons, they would tag the "dabloon police". Many of these accounts, however, didn't do much to stop the inflation and people either kept giving themselves tons of money or people giving viewers massive sums of dabloons.

History

The trend's origins can be traced back to two images posted on Instagram around April 2021 by user catz.jpeg of a cat's paw with the caption "4 dabloons" and a black cat with an outstretched paw with the same caption. The trend may relate back to an episode of Suits mentioning doubloon as a funny word. [5]

By October 2022, "But it will cost you 4 dabloons", a phrase containing the caption became popular on TikTok via slideshows containing the sale of fictional items using the currency and by late November the trend exploded in popularity in the social platform with thousands of accounts posting content with the fictional currency. Videos using the hashtag #dabloons collectively gained nearly 800 million views, whilst its singular counterpart #dabloon collectively gained more than 400 million views as of the 28th of November 2022. [3] [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Z with stroke</span> Letter of the Latin alphabet

Ƶ is a letter of the Latin alphabet, derived from Z with the addition of a stroke through the centre.

WeChat and Weixin are a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.

Viral phenomena or viral sensation are objects or patterns that are able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them. Analogous to the way in which viruses propagate, the term viral pertains to a video, image, or written content spreading to numerous online users within a short time period. This concept has become a common way to describe how thoughts, information, and trends move into and through a human population.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Musical.ly</span> Chinese social media service, now TikTok

Musical.ly was a social media service headquartered in Shanghai with an American office in Santa Monica, California, on which platform users created and shared short lip-sync videos. The first prototype was released in April 2014, and then after that, the official version was launched in August of 2014. Through the app, users could create 15-second to 1-minute lip-syncing music videos and choose sound tracks to accompany them, use different speed options and add pre-set filters and effects. The app also allowed users to browse popular "musers", content, trending songs, sounds and hashtags, and uniquely interact with their fans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ByteDance</span> Chinese internet technology company

ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TikTok</span> Chinese video-focused social network

TikTok, whose mainland Chinese counterpart is Douyin, is a short-form video hosting service owned by ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 3 seconds to 10 minutes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mia Khalifa (song)</span> 2018 single by iLoveFriday

"Mia Khalifa" (originally titled "Mia Khalifa (Diss)", also known as "Hit or Miss", and sometimes stylized as MiA KHALiFA) is a song by American hip hop group iLoveFriday (stylized as iLOVEFRiDAY). The duo of Atlanta-based rappers Aqsa Malik (also known as Smoke Hijabi) and Xeno Carr self-released the song on February 12, 2018, which was later re-released by Records Co and Columbia Records on December 14, 2018. It was included on their second EP, Mood (2019). The song was produced by Carr. The song is a diss track targeting Mia Khalifa, a Lebanese-American Internet celebrity and former pornographic actress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charli D'Amelio</span> American social media personality (born 2004)

Charli Grace D'Amelio is an American social media personality. She was a competitive dancer for over 10 years before starting her social media career in 2019, when she started posting dance videos on the video-sharing platform TikTok. She quickly amassed a large following and subsequently became the most-followed creator on the platform in March 2020 until she was surpassed by Khaby Lame in June 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Triller (app)</span> American social networking service

Triller is an American video-sharing social networking service. The service allows users to create and share short-form videos, including videos set to, or automatically synchronized to music using artificial intelligence technology. Triller was released for iOS and Android in 2015, and initially operated as a video editing app before adding social networking features.

<i>Ratatouille the Musical</i> Crowdsourced musical based on the 2007 Disney/Pixar film

Ratatouille the Musical is an Internet meme and crowdsourced musical based on the 2007 Disney/Pixar film Ratatouille. TikTok user Emily Jacobsen created a short comedic song in tribute to Remy, a rat with a talent for cooking and the main character of the film, in August 2020. This led to another TikTok user, Daniel Mertzlufft, arranging Jacobsen's tribute as if it were a finale to a Disney musical. From there, additional TikTok users continued to add to Mertzlufft's video to envision a full musical, including a playbill, scenic design, choreography, and more songs. In December 2020, Seaview Productions announced a charity benefit concert presentation of the musical. The benefit concert was streamed for 72 hours beginning on January 1, 2021, followed by an encore presentation on January 10, 2021. In total, the production raised $2 million for The Actors Fund and had 350,000 total viewers.

There is evidence that TikTok has down-weighted the posts of topics deemed sensitive by the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party. Topics alleged to have been censored by the platform include the Uyghur genocide, the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, the Sino-Indian border dispute, foreign political leaders, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and Black people. TikTok has also removed or omitted information from its services in order to comply with company policies, legal demands, and government censorship laws. TikTok's responses to claims of censorship have varied, responding that the platform was attempting to protect users from bullying, arguing that certain instances were the result of human error, and stating that such incidents were the result of algorithmic mistakes.

TikTok food trends are specific food recipes and food-related fads on the social media platform TikTok. This content amassed popularity in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many people cooked and ate at home and more people turned to social media for entertainment. While some TikTok users share their diets and recipes, others expand their brand or image on TikTok through step-by-step videos of easy and popular recipes. Users often refer to food-related content as "FoodTok."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Devious lick</span> 2021 TikTok trend promoting vandalism

A devious lick was a viral 2021 TikTok challenge in which North American middle school and high school students posted videos of themselves stealing, vandalizing, or showing off one or more items they stole in their school, typically from a bathroom. The trend has resulted in the arrests of many students as well as various warnings being issued by police departments. It also allegedly spread to some schools in Latin America, England, Germany, Australia and Latvia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">YouTube Shorts</span> Short video clip sharing service

YouTube Shorts is the short-form section of the American video-sharing website YouTube, hosting content much like YouTube's primary service but with a focus on vertical videos at a maximum length of 60 seconds. Videos with a square aspect ratio are also accepted. As of January 2022, Shorts have collectively earned over 5 trillion views since the platform was made available to the public on July 13, 2021 which include video views that pre-date the YouTube Shorts feature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jiggle Jiggle</span> 2022 single by Duke & Jones and Louis Theroux

"Jiggle Jiggle" is a 2022 single by British-American journalist and documentary maker Louis Theroux, produced by Manchester-based DJ duo Duke & Jones. The song was created based on a rap trend that Theroux had been involved in, featuring a snippet of him rapping on the "Gangsta Rap" episode of the show Weird Weekends.

An Internet aesthetic, also simply referred to as an aesthetic, is a visual art style, sometimes accompanied by a fashion style, subculture, or music genre, that usually originates from the Internet or is popularized thereon. Throughout the 2010s and 2020s, online aesthetics gained increasing popularity, specifically on social media platforms such as Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok. The term aesthetic has been described as being "totally divorced from its academic origins", and commonly used as an adjective.

On August 31, 2020, Ronnie McNutt, a 33-year-old American man, committed suicide by shooting himself under the chin with a single shot rifle on a Facebook livestream, which went viral on social media platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Listenbourg</span> Fictional country adjacent to Portugal and Spain

Listenbourg is a fictional country created as the subject of an internet meme in October 2022, which depicts it as an extension of the Iberian Peninsula. French Twitter user Gaspard Hoelscher shared a doctored map of Europe with a red arrow pointing to the outline of a pasted country adjacent to Portugal and Spain, and joked that Americans would not be able to name the country.

Corecore is an Internet aesthetic and artistic movement aiming to capture post–2020 sensibilities. A product of youth culture in the 2020s, the corecore aesthetic can largely be found on TikTok, where it juxtaposes various video clips while emotional music plays.

References

  1. Lee, Anna Grace; Holtermann, Callie (24 November 2022). "What Are 'Dabloons,' the Imaginary Currency of TikTok?" . The New York Times . Archived from the original on 2023-06-17. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
  2. Weatherbed, Jesse (25 November 2022). "Hello traveler…have ye heard about TikTok Dabloons?". The Verge . Retrieved 28 November 2022.
  3. 1 2 Navlakha, Meera (23 November 2022). "TikTok's latest obsession? Dabloons". Mashable . Retrieved 28 November 2022.
  4. "Doubloon". Dictionary.com . Retrieved 28 November 2022.
  5. "Suits: Season 1, Episode 4 script | Subs like Script". subslikescript.com. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
  6. Boseley, Matilda (25 November 2022). "What are dabloons?: Tiktok's new imaginary economy explained". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 November 2022.

TikTok Dabloons entry at Know Your Meme