Watermelon River

Submission 3,919

Part of a series on Viral Videos. [View Related Entries]

About

Watermelon River refers to a video of watermelons floating down a stream. The video was taken by watermelon farmers in Asia who use canals to transport fruit. The video first surfaced on Reddit and TikTok in late 2022. In early 2024, the video went viral again on TikTok, spawning a viral meme trend associated with the Snoop Dogg lyric Smoke Weed Every Day. Many re-animated the Watermelon River video in different video games.

Origin

On September 25th, 2022, a video of watermelons floating down a stream was posted to Imgur^[1] by user funkystay, gaining over 2.1 million views and 1,200 likes in two years (shown below).

The video is most likely from China or Pakistan where farmers use small canals to transport melons and other fruit. For instance, on September 25th, 2022, the X^[2] account @TripInChina posted the video, citing a Douyin user named @20160525ily. However, no watermelon video exists on @20160525ily's Douyin^[3] account.

Other posts of the video shared on Weibo^[4]^[5] in September 2022 link to a since-deleted TikTok video from a user named @al._khamid. Duets and stitches with @al._khamid's video were posted to TikTok^[6]^[7] as early as September 25th, 2022, further indicating a viral spread.

Spread

In September 2022, the video was widely reposted, going viral on multiple platforms. For instance, on September 26th, 2022, Redditor^[8] amish_novelty shared the video to /r/oddlysatisfying, gaining over 22,000 upvotes in two years. On the same day, the video gained over 17,000 likes when shared by Instagram^[9] user @walkofftheearth.

Although the video was posted in late 2022, it wasn't until early 2024 that the video earned memetic usage, following a repost shared by TikToker^[10] @barstoolsports on February 1st, 2024, gaining over 2 million plays and 213,600 likes in two months (shown below).

On March 14th, 2024, TikToker^[11] @disboywild posted a video of a watermelon being thrown into a bathtub with the "Smoke Weed Every Day" sound, gaining over 1 million plays and 156,900 likes in a month (shown below, left).

TikTokers started to use the video's sound to post re-animations of the Watermelon River video, starting with TikToker^[12] @obese_individual's video on April 10th, 2024, which was made in Roblox, gaining over 426,700 plays and 79,000 likes in a day (shown below, right).