Calling People With Headphones On

Submission 777

Part of a series on Pranking. [View Related Entries]

About

Calling People With Headphones On, also known as the Calling With Headphones Challenge, is an online prank and internet challenge where one person puts on noise-canceling headphones so they can't hear anything then calls a third party and tries to have a conversation with them as another friend in the same room listens to the conversation and tries to silently tell the headphone-wearing friend how to respond. The trend was popularized in May 2021 by content creator OfficialCoury and became popularized on TikTok in late 2022, with Kylie Jenner notably doing the prank in October of that year.

Origin

On February 13th, 2020, YouTuber^[10] Tiernan Hickson posted a video where she and a friend call people while one wears noise-canceling headphones, unable to hear the people on the other end of the phone, as the other friend suggests how she should respond (shown below). The video gained over 240,000 views in two years and is the earliest known video to do the prank.

Spread

On May 16th, 2021, YouTuber^[1] and TikToker^[2] @officialcoury posted a video titled "CALLING GIRLS BUT WE CANT HEAR THEM… (Things got intense 😳)" where one friend in a group calls girls while wearing headphones, unable to hear the girl on the other end of the phone, as his friends suggest how he should respond. The video gained over 134,000 views on YouTube (shown below) and the first one-minute clip from it gained over 4.8 million views on TikTok. On May 18th, he posted a second part of the series to YouTube,^[2] posting a third and fourth part to YouTube^[3]^[4] on May 20th and 27th, respectively, while continuing to upload one-minute clips from the videos to TikTok, some gaining millions of views.

OfficialCoury continued to upload videos doing this to YouTube and his TikTok page @officialcoury throughout 2021 and 2022, occasionally going viral on the latter. On July 1st, 2022, TikToker^[5] @jakeandersonn posted a video where three friends do the same thing, crediting Coury with the idea, garnering over 1.8 million views in three months (shown below).

The trend continued to spread over the following months as more TikTokers took part in it. For example, on August 15th, TikToker^[6] @caityunfiltered posted a video doing the prank with friends, garnering over 10 million views in two months (shown below, left). On October 11th, TikToker^[7] @jamievanslooten posted a video doing the prank, garnering over 1.3 million views in two weeks (shown below, right).

Kylie Jenner's Participation

On October 22nd, 2022, Kylie Jenner posted a video to TikTok^[8] doing the prank on her mother Kris, garnering over 25 million views in two days (shown below). That day, Dexerto^[9] also published an article about her video and the trend itself.