Emmanuel The Emu
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About
Emmanuel the Emu is an emu that resides on Knuckle Bump Farms in Florida who went viral in July 2022 for consistently interrupting his caretaker's TikToks by investigating her phone's camera. In the viral videos, Emmanuel is often seen knocking the phone to the ground while the host, a woman named Taylor Blake, tries to stop him by saying things such as, "Emmanuel, don't do it!" Clips of Emmanuel received widespread media coverage and reposts around the web in mid-2022.
Origin
The Knuckle Bump Farms TikTok account[1] is run by employee Taylor Blake. Prior to Emmanuel's viral stardom, she showcased and discussed the farm's animals, sometimes with humorous interruptions and behavior from the animals. On July 8th, 2022, she posted a video in which she begins speaking to the camera about a cow when Emmanuel, the curious emu, interrupts her to inspect the camera, which she scolds him for as he looks confused. The video gained over 8.7 million views in the following two weeks (shown below).
Spread
Over the following several days, Emmanuel made several similar appearances on the account as the video of him interrupting the cow clip spread to other platforms. On July 9th, 2022, Emmanuel interrupted another TikTok in a video that gained over 5.8 million views in 10 days (shown below, left). The same day, she posted a video of Emmanuel knocking over her phone, gaining over 343,000 views (shown below, right).
On July 13th, the Facebook page TYLA[2] posted a compilation video of Emmanuel, gaining over 826,000 likes and reactions as well as 14 million views in six days (shown below).
This helped Emmanuel go viral outside of TikTok. TYLA's video was then reposted to Twitter by user @p4ndr_,[3] where it gained over 160,000 retweets, 849,000 likes and 23 million views. It was also shared to Reddit's /r/Unexpected[6] sub, receiving over 99,300 upvotes in four days.
As the viral video spread, Twitter users celebrated Emmanuel's antics. For example, author Deanna Raybourn[4] tweeted, "Become ungovernable. Be the Emmanuel you wish to see in the world," gaining over 1,400 retweets and 8,800 likes (shown below, left). User @shutabug[5] posted fan art of Emmanuel, gaining over 350 retweets and 1,600 likes (shown below, right).
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
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