The hottest thing on TikTok these days? Sacrificing humanity and pretending to be an NPC. TikTok NPC streamers like Pinkydoll and Cherry Crush are inadvertently going viral and freaking everyone out in the process.
Pinkydoll, in particular, is hitting remarkable viewership highs with her bizarre videos of looped phrases and stiff mannerisms, typically filmed while she, uh, pops kernels of popcorn with a hair straightener (already a recipe for virality).
What's going on?
By mid-July, videos of TikTok streamers Pinkydoll and Cherry Crush stiffly repeating canned phrases and gestures began trending on Twitter — one tweet of a Pinkydoll video has garnered nearly 50 million views.
These streams consist of a simple, consistent formula: the streamer, facing the camera, bobs along with upbeat music, reacting to gifts purchased by viewers. Expect lots of "Ice Cream so good," "Gang gang!" and loud balloon-popping.
TikTok gifts take the form of stickers and filters that range in price from one TikTok coin to several thousand.
One TikTok coin typically costs about $0.01 and users can buy them in packs of 100 (about $1.29) or more. The streamer will receive some profits from the gifts purchased with TikTok coins.
All that to say that these TikTokers are getting paid to act like robots.
It sort of inverts Vtubers, the digital YouTube streamers: in this case, the host is a real human but they're acting like a pre-programmed character.
Pinkydoll, a French-Canadian TikToker, was the first to garner attention but Cherry Crush, a Floridian TikToker, wasn't far behind.
Baffled Twitter users appropriately deemed the behavior exhibited in the viral videos akin to NPCs, the non-player computer-controlled characters who inhabit video game worlds.
In particular, these TikTok streamers recall the wooden NPCs seen in role-playing games like Bethesda's Skyrim, which boasts some of the most amusingly odd NPC interactions in all of gaming.
Several other TikTok streamers are engaging in similar NPC behavior but Pinkydoll and Cherry Crush are the most viral examples.
The TikTok streamer videos are, admittedly, oddly engaging, what with their stiff movements and repetitive catchphrases. It taps into the same neglected part of the brain as those Oddly Satisfying videos.
But it gets weirder. That is, some people may be watching these streams for a different kind of satisfaction.
Both Pinkydoll and Cherry Crush are online sex workers, maintaining Onlyfans accounts and uploading NSFW videos to the usual outlets; the latter even hosts ASMR videos on YouTube.
Thus, some commenters are speculating that the TikTok streamers are playing into some sort of NPC fetish.
There's nothing overtly sexual about these streams so these commenters are likely just projecting — TikTok explicitly forbids what it terms "sexually suggestive content" — but it does provide another potential wrinkle to an already strange situation.
Besides the culture shock, the streams are still occasionally entertaining, from an outsider's perspective.
Take, for instance, the surreal moment when Pinkydoll broke character mid-stream and began speaking in rapid-fire French before dipping back into dead-eyed NPC-speak.
It's also worth noting that this isn't the first time that TikTok has fallen to the NPCs.
The "NPC in real life" meme took over TikTok in 2022, though that content typically involved pranks and IRL act-outs.
There are still some TikTokers creating "NPC in real life" videos, though it's far less common nowadays.
Further, we should point out that some of these NPC streams are conducted by SFW TikTokers, some of whom have been engaging in the practice prior to the freakier streams that bubbled over into the mainstream in July.
The good news is that these NPC TikTok streams are harmless. It may be hard to watch consenting adults getting paid to replicate themselves over and over again but, then again, they're consenting adults.
And, admittedly, there is some kind of skill involved with making these kinds of ear-catching sounds over and over again. Even Timbaland is a fan: the omnipresent aughts-era producer broke records with a big donation to Pinkydoll.
Maybe this is a preview of what social media will be like when AI takes over, which will definitely never happen. Right? Right??
