Still Water

Submission 131

Part of a series on Urban Exploration / Urbex. [View Related Entries]

About

Still Water became a topic of ironic memes on TikTok in 2024, after a series of viral urban exploration videos popularized the term on the platform. Still water or stagnant water is water that has been left sitting for long periods of time, promoting the growth of biofilm, bacteria, and fungi, making it dangerous to drink or swim in. In 2024, a series of viral TikToks exaggerated the danger still water poses and parodied the "abandoned building exploration" style content that popularised the term. Memes about "still water" are often paired with other brain rot phrases like Balkan Rage, noradrenaline, and those who know.

Origin

On June 6th, 2024, TikTok^[1] urban exploration (urbex) account @tp.urbex posted a video about how they visited an abandoned hospital and found still water in the basement. The video gathered over 19 million views and 1 million likes in five months.

On August 1st, TikToker^[2] @loganr_moore posted a video explaining what still water is, calling it one of the most "dangerous things you can come across when you are exploring." He described how still and stagnant water can harbor a number of dangerous bacteria and fungi, and can even contain brain-eating parasites and amoeba. The video gathered over 16 million plays and 800,000 likes in two months.

Spread

On September 28th, 2024, TikToker^[3] @aeroschmuk2.0's urban exploration video gathered over 50 million views and 4.6 million likes. The video starts with him writing, "Let's climb this water tower!" and ends with him showing the still water in the tower with a menacing soundtrack.

The aforementioned video inspired a series of parody videos, with people joking about finding "still water" in their own homes and pretending as though it was really scary.

On August 17th, TikToker^[4] @indians.tenesse posted a video showing a sauce packet and throwing something into it to mimic and joke about the style of "still water" urban exploration videos that grew popular that year. The video gathered over 500,000 plays and 64,000 likes in a month.

On September 22nd, TikToker^[5] @happy_pills1234 posted a video of water in their room, jokingly asking, "Y'all is this still water???" and gathering over 3 million plays and 73,000 likes in two weeks.

On October 1st, 2024, TikToker^[6] @gdig728 posted a video mocking urban explorers who make still water out to be rarer and more dangerous than it actually is, gathering over 62,000 plays and 14,000 likes in three days.