Pardon Laurent (TikTok Trend) / Laurent Baffie Trend

About

Pardon Laurent or Laurent Baffie Trend is a TikTok pranking trend based on a viral video in which French TV presenter and comedian Laurent Baffie pranked a friend in a mall, who yelled back after being pushed, "Putain, Laurent. Excuse-moi!" ("Damn, Laurent. Excuse me!" in English). Although the video was initially posted in June 2024, it only gained viral attention in early October 2024 after TikTokers started to recreate the original interaction by filming comedy skits of themselves pretending to be pushed by Laurent and initially reacting with anger. After the person realizes Laurent was the one who pushed them, they typically apologize by saying, "I didn't know it was you."

Origin

In early June 2024, French comedian Laurent Baffie uploaded a video to TikTok^[1] pranking a friend by rudely pushing him. The friend, who initially didn't recognize Laurent, starts to argue with the comedian but quickly realizes it's a friend and says, "Pardon, Laurent. Excuse-moi," repeatedly apologizing for overreacting to the prank.

Laurent reposted the original video on October 16th, 2024, amassing more than 173,000 plays and 7,400 likes in a week.

The earliest memetic content related to the Laurent prank video was posted on TikTok^[2] by user @greenz3r on June 10th, 2024, who added a POV text in French that translates to, "pov: you're having trouble with your friend but he has dark files [blackmail] on you." The video (seen below) amassed roughly 2 million plays and 268,000 likes in five months.

Spread

The Laurent Trend, which consists of creating comedic content pretending to apologize to Laurent after he pranked you, was popularized on TikTok in mid-October 2024. For example, on October 10th, 2024, TikTok^[3] user @noah_sgds posted a video captioned "you're being cheated on but it doesn't matter it's Laurent." The video (seen below) received roughly 10 million plays and 1 million likes in a week.

On October 13th, 2024, TikTok^[4] user @itscharlotteok posted a video explaining the Laurent trend (seen below), which garnered over 262,000 plays and 32,000 likes in a week.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References