About

Showing Brainrot to Strangers refers to a genre of prank videos that involves the prankster showing random people printed out images of "brainrot" memes in public and pointing to each one without saying anything, recording their reactions. The trend started on TikTok in early 2024 and continued heading into 2025. The prank is reminiscent of the Mouse Pay and Freak Pay videos, which surfaced a few months after the original Showing Brainrot to Strangers video.

Origin

On February 10th, 2024, TikToker^[1] @oprahcam5 shared a video of himself walking up to an elderly Walmart employee and showing him printed-out photos from the internet of Black men in funny poses and making funny faces. Over one year, the video received over 24,800 likes. Currently, the video is the earliest known iteration of the Showing Brainrot to Strangers prank.

Later on that same day, TikToker^[2] @oprahcam5 shared another video following the same premise, in which he showed the printed-out images to a younger Walmart employee. The video received significantly more engagement, amassing over 598,500 likes over the same timeframe.

Spread

TikToker @oprahcam5 continued to post videos of himself showing printed-out memes to strangers in the following days, like one TikTok^[3] shared on February 13th, 2024, which received over 873,800 likes in a year.

Heading into 2024, others started to emulate the prank style as the concept continued spreading online.

For instance, on November 9th, TikToker^[4] @deladinde44 posted a video of himself showing a binder filled with printed memes to a teenage couple at a mall. One of the memes was Jank Boteko. Over 10 months, the video gained over 1.5 million likes.

On February 19th, 2025, TikToker^[5] @jaxdomm posted a video of himself showing brainrot memes to a woman shopping at a grocery store. Among the memes were John Pork, Low Taper Fade, Locked-In Alien and Eye of Rah, among others. Over seven months, the video received over 2.3 million likes.

The abovementioned video was reposted by Instagram^[6] user @thesillycards on March 29th, gaining over 47,900 likes in six months.

Showing Brainrot to Strangers videos continued to go viral heading into 2025. For instance, on May 4th, TikToker^[7] @publicbrainrot shared a video that followed the premise, gaining over 32,900 likes in four months.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References