Bad Butcher Knife Haircuts

About

Bad Butcher Knife Haircuts, also known as Meat Cleaver Haircuts or Bad Chinese Barber, refers to a series of viral clickbait videos featuring Chinese hairdressers giving women bad haircuts using large butcher knives or meat cleavers. The videos generally start out with a person leaning back in their chair, with their hair laid out on a flat surface. The hairdresser then hacks away a section of the hair and goes back in to feather the edges in an attempt to make the ends less blunt. The person then sits upright to show a choppy, asymmetrical haircut for the final reveal. Most of the viral iterations of the video format appear to be reposts from various Chinese social networking sites.

Origin

On November 3rd, 2019, Instagram^[1] page @shanghaiobserver posted a video of a person hacking away at the hair of a person laying flat on the ground. The video is the earliest known use of the knife-haircut formula, albeit the knife used appeared to be a regular kitchen knife and no final hair reveal was presented. The video gathered over 56,000 views in nearly three years since its upload (seen below).

Spread

The clickbait haircut formula continued to be prevalent in later years, with a video following the haircut formula being posted to the Russian social networking site Vk^[2] on May 31st, 2020, gathering over 180,000 views in over two years (seen below). The result shown in this early iteration of the haircut trend appears to be less egregious than its successors.

On August 13th, 2020, Facebook^[3] page China Plus America posted a video of a person giving someone a haircut using a large butcher knife or meat cleaver. The video contains a final result that displays asymmetrical and messy layers, and the caption on the video makes a cheeky reference to the result by calling it "quite fashionable and cutting edge." The video has gathered over 137,000 views in nearly two years (seen below).

On December 20th, 2020, TikToker^[4] @kaisa568 also posted a video of a man cutting someone's hair using a large meat cleaver, with the recipient sitting upright after the hacking to reveal a jagged mess. The video was posted alongside a caption that read, "Use a kitchen knife to cut your hair, do you want to try it#tiktok #hair #hairstyle," prompting other users to comment variations of "No thank you Sweeney Todd." The post gathered over 400,000 plays and 3,000 likes in nearly two years (seen below)

On January 4th, 2022, Redditor^[5] @butterflyeffectsz posted a video of someone trying their hand at the haircut method, alongside a caption that read, "everytime they do this it looks like shit." The post gathered over 15,000 upvotes in nearly nine months (seen below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References