Spinning Chip

About

Spinning Chip refers to a viral video showing a potato chip rotating for an hour while "Funky Town" by Lipps Inc. plays in the background. The video went viral on TikTok due in large part to people finding it absurdly humorous, similar to other examples such as Spinning Cat and Horizontally Spinning Rat.

Origin

On November 6th, 2022, YouTuber doober43 posted a one-hour video of a potato chip rotating, set to "Funky Town" by Lipps Inc.^[1] The video gained over 43 million views in just over one year (shown below).

Precursor

The video is notably part of a larger trend of low-quality images rotating to "Funky Town."^[2] For example, one such video was posted on July 22nd, 2022, when YouTuber CHRISARTS posted a video of a chicken nugget rotating, gaining over 520,000 views in 18 months (shown below).

Spread

As the video gained millions of views after being posted in late 2022, the spinning chip began gaining notoriety and variations on TikTok. For example, on January 10th, 2023, TikToker igorektv_ posted a variation on the original that gained over 37,000 views in one year (shown below, left). On August 25th, 2023, TikToker mr_creatorr posted a variation in which they recreated a spinning chip in Minecraft, gaining over 5,700 likes in five months (shown below, right).

On August 1st, 2023, TikToker ceooffrozenblueberries posted a video laughing at a friend falling asleep to the video, gaining over 860,000 likes in five months (shown below, left). On January 5th, 2024, TikToker demanding_delynn posted a video remarking about how her third-grade students loved the video, gaining over 640,000 likes in two weeks (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References