Sean Bridon / African Lore

About

Sean Bridon is a Gabonese content creator and comedian who makes viral videos with his friends on Facebook. In 2021 and 2022, many of his videos were reposted to TikTok and referred to as African Lore. TikTokers reposted and sped up his obscure, comedy sketches featuring a midget, or dwarf / little person, who is often the protagonist. Additionally, the most common sound used in the trend was the second Five Nights at Freddy's song made by The Living Tombstone. The TikToks spread to encompass other ethnicity-based lores such as "British Lore." Also, the trend builds off of the Lore vs. Lore meme.

Origin

Sean Bridon is an African content creator from the country of Gabon. He started posting videos to Facebook in mid-2015. At first, his content on the platform was not comedic. For instance, he posted his first Facebook^[1] video on June 29th, 2015, being a video of a man walking out of a nightclub.

It wasn't until late 2019 that Bridon started posting comedic content with his troop of comedians, one of them being the dwarf featured in most of them. Their first video together was uploaded to Facebook^[2] on October 13th, 2019, where over the course of three years it received roughly 7.2 million views and 263,000 reactions (shown below).

Spread

Bridon continued to post content on Facebook going into 2020 with his videos receiving increased engagement over time. By 2022, most of them had received upwards of 2 million views each. For instance, on February 13th, 2020, he posted a video^[3] that received roughly 12.9 million views and 529,000 reactions in two years. On May 29th, 2020, he posted a sketch about condoms that earned roughly 26 million views and 460,000 reactions in two years (shown below).

Going into 2021 and 2022, his videos became more stylized, absurd and based in physical comedy. Additionally, he started to employ viral video sounds similar to YouTube Kids videos in which they were highly edited and used a lot of sound effects such as the Vine Thud / Boom. As an example, on March 3rd, 2022, Bridon posted a video to Facebook^[4] in which the dwarf character is levitating next to a burning stake. Over the course of two months, the video received roughly 188 million views and 3.9 million reactions (shown below).

African Lore on TikTok

On November 10th, 2021, TikToker^[5] liohis2 posted a video with Russian text overlay, being a repost of one of Bridon's videos. Over the course of five months, the video received roughly 4.1 million plays and 305,500 likes (shown below, left). Due to the rapid success of the video, liohis2 started reposting more of Bridon's videos to their channel.

On December 28th, 2021, they posted a TikTok^[6] that had text overlay reading, "African lore," and used the second Five Nights at Freddy's song created by YouTuber The Living Tombstone. The video received roughly 31,800 plays and 2,600 likes over the course of four months (shown below, right).

TikToker liohis2 continued the "African Lore" theme on their channel going into 2022 with the videos receiving increased engagement. For instance, on March 14th, 2022,^[7] he uploaded, "African Lore 31," which earned roughly 8.5 million plays and 893,600 likes in one month (shown below, left). Other Tiktokers started to pick up on the trend going into April 2022. For instance, on April 7th, 2022, TikToker^[8] felix_8099 reposted a video of Bridon and his friends comically walking across a puddle. Over the course of three weeks, the TikTok received roughly 8.2 million plays and 1.5 million likes (shown below, right).

On April 26th, 2022, TikToker^[9] funnymenhaha posted a video that showcased, "Bri'ish Lore," earning roughly 618,300 plays and 141,500 likes in three days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References