Overview

Ariana Grande Fortnite Concert, officially known as the Rift Tour, is a three-day Fortnite in-game musical event with five virtual performances by American singer Ariana Grande. The event became a subject of both discussions and memes in early August 2021.

Background

On August 1st, 2021, Fortnite developer and publisher Epic Games announced that American singer Ariana Grande will give virtual performances as a part of _Fortnite_'s "Rift Tour" event taking place in the game between August 6th and 8th, 2021. The announcement posts (shown below) received over 1.5 million views on Twitter,^[1] 2.3 million views on Instagram^[2] and 3.2 million views on YouTube^[3] in four days.

On the official page of the event, showtimes for five Rift Tour concerts were announced.^[4]

Developments

On August 4th, Epic Games announced that an Ariana Grande-themed package was now available in the in-game shop,^[5] including an Ariana Grande Outfit with two variants, a Piggy Smallz Back Bling, an emote, a glider and a pickaxe (image shown below).

Online Reactions

Immediately following the announcement, the upcoming concert, virtual appearance of Grande in Fortnite and the addition of her items into the game became a subject of discussions and memes online, primarily on Twitter. For example, on August 1st, Twitter^[6] user @MatttGFX posted a tweet mentioning that Grande previously appeared in a Final Fantasy mobile game. The tweet received over 660 retweets and 5,100 likes in four days (shown below, left). On August 3rd, 2021, Twitter^[7] user @luulubuu posted a similar tweet that gained over 3,200 retweets and 21,200 likes in two days (shown below, right).

On August 3rd, Twitter^[8] user @wrong_wes posted a still image of Ariana Grande model aiming a pistol and made a reference to Grande's song "Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored." The tweet received over 32,000 retweets and 203,800 likes in two days (shown below).

Search Interest

External References