Ginger Fringe Incident

About

The Ginger Fringe Incident refers to a viral video of TikTok barber @12pell giving a ginger boy a "textured fringe" haircut that viewers perceived as bad, inspiring video edits and memes criticizing the cut and deeming the haircut the "ginger fringe incident." The video was uploaded in late December 2022 and continued to inspire memes and videos referencing it throughout January 2023.

Origin

On December 22nd, 2022, TikToker^[1] and barber @12pell posted a video where he cuts a ginger boy named Sean's hair, which is covering his eyes. In the video, Sean describes how he wants a "textured fringe." The end of the video features multiple comparison shots of his hair before and after the cut. The video gained over 24.1 million views in a month (shown below). The haircut was largely criticized by commenters as being bad.

Spread

In the following weeks, TikTokers began posting videos referring to the @12pell video as the "ginger fringe incident." For example, on December 28th, 2022, TikToker^[2] @xlrxzw posted an edit under the hashtag "#gingerfringeincident" where the haircut is shown followed by scared and shocked reaction videos, garnering over 4.7 million views in a month (shown below).

On January 4th, TikToker^[3] @mylzinthecut posted a video of a barber doing a haircut on another ginger kid, captioned, "the ginger fringe incident gone right," garnering over 3.8 million views in two weeks (Shown below, left). On January 5th, TikToker^[4] @bird.and.toph.talks posted an interview with Sean from the viral video, garnering over 1.1 million views in a similar span of time (shown below, right). On January 18th, TikToker^[5] @noahglenncarter explained the meme, garnering over 500,000 views in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References