TikTok Step Chicken Cult Wars

Overview

TikTok Step Chicken Cult Wars refers to escalating commenting raids and profile picture changes which began with the formation of TikToker Chunkysdead's "cult" of fans called step-chickens in May 2020 leading to the formation of other TikTok "cults" to challenge them. The major cults agreed to plan "battle zones" where cult members can comment on their allegiance to a certain cult.

Background

On May 6th, 2020, TikTok comedian chunkysdead called on her fans to suggest a cult name in a video that received over 58,200 likes in a week (shown below, left). On May 10th, after establishing the name cult name as "step chicken" and ordering followers to use a certain profile picture, chunkysdead announced in a video that they thousands have people have changed their profile picture (shown below, right). The video received over 145,000 likes in three days.

Developments

On May 10th, 2020, TikToker myleswithuhy announced that he would be starting a cult in a video that garnered over 7,000 likes in three days (Shown below, left). On the following day, TikToker chunkysdead announced that enemy cults were popping but like @adrianxortiz's cult and @myleswithuhy's cult and she would be posting a declaration of war soon (shown below, right). The video gained over 774,600 likes in two days.

On May 12th, 2020, Redditor 1BoiledCabbage posted to r/OutoftheLoop^[1] saying, "There have been at least 10 profiles on Tik Tok I've seen today who have had this profile picture or a variation of it as their profile picture. Some I have seen where she is wearing sunglasses, some where she is smoking. I don't believe I've seen this girl before. What is going on? Why are they using her profile picture?" The post garnered over 100 points (84% upvoted) and was successfully answered by users explaining the step chicken cult. That day, TikToker chunkysdead announced that a "battle zone," or unsuspecting account to be spammed with cult comments, would be announced the next day at six PM (shown below, left). The video gained over 171,800 likes in a day. That same day, another TikTok cult leader adrianxortiz made a similar announcement to prepare for the battle (shown below, right). The video received over 52,700 likes in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References