Brother Boxing (TikTok Trend)

About

Brother Boxing describes a TikTok trend in which a person will record themselves acting completely normal and doing a task or chore while their brother pretends to box them. Since 2020, the trend has slowly evolved into showing the brother doing more elaborate fake moves on the participant, often finishing with a fake wrestling chokehold slam. Videos participating in the trend often use the caption "POV: you have a brother" or similar variations.

Origin

On November 18th, 2020, TikToker @nadine.rous^[1] uploaded one of the first examples of the trend to the platform. Posing the TikTok as her answering a question, she gave an example of what it's like to have a little brother. In the TikTok, the little brother is shown to be throwing punches wildly at her, but not connecting, before it cuts to showing him standing over her and threatening her, earning over 2.7 million likes in three years (shown below).

Spread

Over the following years, the trend received little in the way of evolution or change but continued to grow in prevalence. On August 16th, 2023, TikToker busta_brothers^[2] uploaded the meme in a POV variety, stating in Spanish that this is what it's like to have a younger brother. The sister can be seen buttering toast while the brother does his fake fighting routine, ending it by wrapping his arms around her neck. The post earned over 2.2 million likes in three months (shown below).

A month later, on September 8th, 2023, TikToker @ThomasWu^[3] added more to the trend by showing himself wearing boxing gloves while pretending to throw jabs at his sister. In this example, the sister can be seen sitting down and eating food while trying to ignore the brother's fake boxing, though he occasionally does hit her hair and eventually causes her to dodge a few times (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References