Dance crazes and wacky challenges are a big part of what keeps TikTok one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, but there’s another cornerstone to the app’s content that never seems to fail to go viral: pranking your friends. TikTok’s latest way to make fun of the people who love you is a fake Google search that falsely predicts how long someone has to live based on a particular characteristic.
The “prank” is pretty simple to pull off. Users display a search result ⏤ typically from Google ⏤ from a life expectancy calculator based on a certain characteristic of the person they want to prank. Typical parameters are “how long do tall people live,” “how long do emos live,” or “how long do idiots live.” The prankster then shows a message featuring lyrics from “I’ll Never Forget You” ⏤ either the Noisettes or the Zara Larsson version ⏤ with the track in question playing throughout the video.
Perhaps it’s not the most sophisticated joke you’ll hear online this year, but the video call-outs seem to be a hit, with some of the videos receiving hundreds and thousands of likes and views.
The trend is the latest to prominently feature “Never Forget You.” Though the Noisettes and MNEK songs are two different songs by different songwriters, both trended prominently last year in videos TikTok users produced to highlight a person or pet that had significantly impacted their lives. However, those videos tended to be much more heartfelt than the newer trend.
