Mongolian Fishing Boots, Tech Extremists & Zara Employees

Submission 9,306

Part of a series on Invest In Rare Fish / Multiple Uncles. [View Related Entries]

About

Mongolian Fishing Boots, Tech Extremists & Zara Employees refers to a series of parody hustle culture, sigma grindset and ironic business TikTok videos that emphasized the three aforementioned signifiers as vital components to a successful future. The trend started on TikTok in late 2022, related to the precursor Invest in Rare Fish and Multiple Uncles trend that started on Instagram. The ironic concepts of Mongolian fishing boots, tech extremists and Zara employees (among other topics like ISIS recruiters and Shrek's funeral) were all started by TikToker Luca Maxim (@santeluca) in October 2022 and most videos used Luca Maxim's song "Do U Bleed At All."

Origin

Mongolian Fishing Boots

TikToker santeluca posted his first parody hustle culture TikTok^[1] on September 29th, 2022, in which he addressed how he became "a millionaire at 16." Thereafter, his account entirely consisted of black-and-white edits that parodied hustle culture motivation videos similar to the content of Andrew Tate. On October 8th, 2022, TikToker^[2] santeluca posted a video that satirically revealed that he lives in a small Mongolian town named Ulaangom (shown below, left). On October 10th, 2022, he posted his first TikTok^[3] that referenced Mongolian fishing boots, emphasizing them as a necessity for catching rare fish and going from an incel to having ten wives. Over the course of three weeks, the video received roughly 100,500 plays and 16,700 likes (shown below, right).

Tech Extremists and Zara Employees

On October 11th, 2022, TikToker^[4] santeluca posted his first video that mentioned tech extremists, being a made-up term. The video included the term in a list of "The most common jobs by height," and over the course of 20 days, the video received roughly 316,300 plays and 47,000 likes (shown below, left). On October 12th, 2022, TikToker^[5] santeluca posted his first video that mentioned Zara employees, using a picture of the Zara Boss from the Average Fan vs. Average Enjoyer template. In 19 days, the video received roughly 537,200 plays and 77,100 likes (shown below, right).

Spread

Other than TikToker santeluca, others on the platform started satirically reiterating the concepts of Mongolian fishing boots, tech extremists and Zara employees. For instance, on October 17th, 2022, TikToker^[6] everyonelovesreid posted a video about how they'd style a pair of Mongolian fishing boots, gaining roughly 4,500 views in two weeks (shown below, left). On October 30th, 2022, TikToker^[7] isaacsguitar posted a video that showed "our mongolian uncles on their way to defeat tech extremists and take back our rare fish," gaining roughly 53,400 plays and 11,000 likes in one day (shown below, right).