Suspect Challenge

About

Suspect Challenge is the name of a viral trend on TikTok in which two people, most often a couple in a relationship, will pretend to be giving police-style descriptions of each other while they are running away slowly, taking turns one after another. In late 2024, the trend started to appear on the platform with the setup and punchlines being similar to the We're X, Of Course We Y trend from earlier in the year comprised of a call and response style of changing who's in front of the camera except each participant roasts the other during their run.

Origin

Several of the earlier posts in the trend credit a TikTok account by the name of @Lauren Case, and will show the same TikTok as part of a remix where it is side-by-side with a different type of brain rot video, however, the original has since been deleted.

On October 26th, 2024, TikToker user3954668411600^[1] uploaded one of these TikToks from @Lauren Case with what is believed to be the first "Suspect Challenge" example on TikTok (shown below). The post received over 133,000 views and 1,400 likes in five days.

Spread

An earlier example, believed to be made after the initial one sometime around late October 2024 by TikToker @Lauren Case, was posted by TikToker .j.e.s.s.e^[2] on October 24th, 2024. In this one, two sisters switch off while running down the street, each taking turns trying to insult the other by saying mean things about the person playing the "suspect" role. The TikTok, which received 47,000 likes in six days, quickly set the tone for what the trend would be going forward (shown below).

As the trend continued to spread over the following days, it started to change from being purely about things that would be seen as negative and had couples doing it as a way to be lighthearted in their bantering with occasional good things thrown in.

For example, on October 26th, 2024, TikToker aubreygavelloo^[3] uploaded a TikTok in which she and her husband did the challenge while running outside of their home. In the TikTok, which gained over 2.3 million likes in four days, the two can be seen switching between being mean and being wholesome, signaling a shift in the trend's meaning as it continued to spread (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References