Adrian's Kickback

Submission 2,577

Overview

Adrian's Kickback refers to a viral party that took place in Huntington Beach, California, on May 22nd, 2021. Initiated by a viral TikTok in which user adrian.lopez517 invited viewers to a "kickback" party to celebrate his birthday, the party gathered over 2,500 attendants, some of whom flew in from other cities, with the media comparing it to the 2012 film Project X.

Background

On May 18th, 2021, TikTok^[1] user adrian.lopez517 posted a now-deleted video in which they invited viewers to gather for a "kickback" party at 7:30 p.m. on May 21st in Huntington Beach in Orange County, California (repost shown below). The TikTok was originally posted by Adrian Lopez's friend and invited viewers to celebrate Lopez's birthday.

According to an interview with journalist Taylor Lorenz,^[2] the original TikTok only gained 40 likes. In addition to TikTok, Lopez and his friend used Snapchat to advertise the party.

The news of the upcoming event and the hashtag "#adrianskickback" received viral spread as TikTok users posted videos in which they urged each other to come to the party and posted humorous clips about it (examples shown below). On Friday and Saturday, users posted videos of themselves making a drive to Huntington Beach to attend the party.

As of May 22nd, 2021, videos tagged with the hashtag #adrianskickback had over 100 million views on TikTok and over 273,000 views as of May 24th.

Developments

On May 21st, 2021, a gathering for Adrian's Kickback took place on Huntington Beach due to the confusion about the date of the party.^[3]^[4]

On May 22nd, 2021, approximately 2,500 people gathered on Huntington Beach to attend Adrian's Kickback. On May 23nd, 2021, TikTok user liamtheimpaler posted a montage video from the party, depicting scenes of large crowds dancing, people setting off fireworks, riding on top of cars, jumping on police cars and jumping down an overpass. The video gained over 7.6 million views and 2.1 million likes (shown below, center). Other users on TikTok and other social media posted videos from the event.

Police declared^[5] the event to be an "unlawful assembly […] due to unruly crowds," putting an emergency curfew in the area between 11:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. on the night of the party. In total, 149 individuals were arrested during the event on charges of vandalism, firing dangerous or illegal fireworks, failure to disperse and curfew violations. Users on TikTok^[6] and Twitter^[7] reported that police fired paintballs and pepper munitions at the crowd.

On May 22nd, 2021, journalist Taylor Lorenz tweeted^[3] a video interview with Adrian Lopez and his friend who posted the TikTok video (shown below).

I found Adrian from Adrian’s kickback! and his friend who posted the original viral TikTok. The hashtag #Adrianskickback has over 180M views on TikTok as of today pic.twitter.com/pzwUHX0ble

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) May 23, 2021

Online Reactions

On Twitter and other social media, users posted comments and memes about the event (examples shown below). Viral TikToks were reuploaded by users on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms.

Some media outlets^[8] and social media users^[9] raised concerns that participants of the gathering exposed themselves and others to the risk of contracting COVID-19.