This week’s zeitgeist snapshot explains what ballhog means, how a video of someone wrapping a burger led to a new meme format, and the dangers of Benny tripping. So strap in, and let’s go.
What is “ballhog”?
Ballhog or ball hog is a streetwear fashion style growing in popularity among younger people. The cool ones, anyway. The idea is to wear vintage clothes that look normal, even drab, to most, but that people in the know can recognize as interesting or unique. Like the best youth trends, it’s an insider vs. outsider thing that takes connoisseurship to understand. Some examples: If you’re wearing a late 1990s Helmut Lang denim jacket, most people will think “thrifted,” but a ballhog-enjoyer would recognize it as a seminal piece of streetwear history. If you want to be ballhog, rocking a pair of skinny jeans isn’t going to cut it unless they’re from Dior Homme or at least Cheap Monday.
The style is named after the Ball Hog Collective, a group of rappers, Twitch streamers, and content creators founded by the Atlanta-based indie record label Ballhog. It was popularized by streamer Brady Goodwin, seen below looking quite ballhog:
The #ballhog hashtag is blowing up (as people used to say) lately with a growing collection of kids posting videos to show off their ballhog fits, like so:
The popularity of the style comes down to, I think, how difficult it is to commodify. Most truly organic trends are recognized quickly by culture vulture types, and in a few months, there’s a line of clothes at Target, but you can’t do that with ballhog. There’s no way to make “new” ballhog gear, as that would mark it as inauthentic immediately. Gotta hand it to the kids for adopting a style that is at once exclusionary and impossible to rip off.
What is the “while they’re out partying btw” meme?
On the opposite edge of the spectrum from ballhog fashion is the “while they’re out partying btw” meme, videos made to show off the strange, specific, and usually useless talent one develops while others are out wearing cool clothes and socializing. The phrase has been kicking around since last year, when TikToker @tacobella posted this video
but it’s taken off more recently, thanks to the huge number of views on this video showing off some truly mind-blowing burger wrapping skills:
This led to an influx of videos of people showing off what they were doing instead of partying. Like this mechanic:
this gym rat:
and this pickleball player:
This is the second youth trend I support wholeheartedly. We can’t all be cool ballhoggers and we don’t all have talent, but we can all learn to do a thing really well through brute force and repetition.
What does “crunged” and “scuba” mean?
The past tense of “cringe,” “crunged” is often used to describe extreme cringe, like “I cringed so hard I crunged.”
As for “scuba,” it now describes something that is very smelly, which might be because the word conjures the dead air of unventilated, underwater spaces. But it’s often accompanied by a pinch-your-nose gesture, which looks like the gesture in the Scuba Dance that was popular on TikTok a few months ago, so that’s a more likely origin for the term.
What is “Benny tripping?”
There has been a steady stream of news stories about kids overdosing on Benadryl over the last few years. They call it “Benny tripping,” and it’s achieved by taking too much of the allergy medicine, like 10 times the amount recommended. Among the active ingredients in Benadryl is Diphenhydramine, and it’s a particularly nasty drug. Unlike most recreational substances, tripping on Benadryl is not fun. It’s a deliriant, and taking too much results in hallucinations that are usually described as terrifying—swarms of spiders, shadow people, whispering voices, etc. Benadryl overdoses can result in loss of short term memory, displacement from time and space, and panic attacks that last for hours or even days. Or you die from tachycardia. Here’s how Reddit user Reasonable-County971 described their experience,
I lost access to my memories. I couldn’t recognize my mom—I mistook her for a ‘pretty nurse’. Early in the trip, before you lose yourself, you develop tremendous anxiety, far far beyond anything else I can compare it to. Also, you have motor skills affected, including losing access to your bladder.
So yeah, it’s a bad drug. And it’s easy to get—just pop down to CVS. On the plus side, despite sometimes overly hysterical reporting on Benadryl as an “online trend” or challenge, tripping on Benadryl is such a harrowing, not-at-all-fun experience, its use isn’t particularly popular among young people. But if you want to scare yourself, read some trip reports, watch this YouTube video, and imagine someone you love going through this.
Viral video of the week: Viral Cheezit Girl
This week’s viral video is very meta, and it’s hilarious to anyone who follows the trajectory of viral internet sensations. Brought to us by the great @ariisaysso, this video lays out the history of the fictional Cheezit Girl as she becomes an internet sensation, quits her job, sells merch, releases a rap single, releases a remix, reheats the nachos, and falls into obscurity, all in about two and a half minutes. We’ve seen this story before with the Hawk Tuah Girl, Dah Bih Gah Kid, and many more future members of the “remember that thing” club, and we’ll no doubt see it all again soon. Such is the circle of life.