What Do You Hear? TikTok Challenge

Submission 30,393

Part of a series on TikTok. [View Related Entries]

About

What Do You Hear? is a TikTok video trend and social game in which audio is played in the background while various words are displayed on-screen. The idea is that the audio is muddled in a way that when you hear it, your brain will change what it hears based on what words you are reading on the screen, even though the audio itself never changes. This is similar to the Yanny or Laurel phenomenon and typically inspires debates among participants who hear different things.

Origin

On October 20th, 2019, TikToker Monkey Seb^[1] created the first original sound on TikTok that was used in videos doing this trend. His video^[2] received 1.5 million likes and spawned over 11,600 videos in two years (shown below).

The sound quickly saw use by other TikTokers who wanted to make their own twists on the video. The most prominent variation of this sound was done by TikToker^[3] dent_head, who did a version^[4] with slightly fewer words on March 8th, 2021, that received a million likes in seven months (shown below).

Spread

This trend of audio mishearing spread around as other creators using their own original sounds added to it. On November 30th, 2019, TikToker^[7] Noah Jones created a version of the video in which he would tell the viewer that he could change the sound that you were hearing, which would be done by placing words on the screen to change your perception of the audio. This original audio sound has over 6,600 videos, with the original^[8] receiving over 500,000 likes in two years (shown below).

On December 15th, 2019, TikToker^[5] Noah Jones made another version of this using a different sound, but still telling the viewer that he could change what they heard from it. This sound has over 6,400 videos made using it, with the original^[6] receiving over 110,000 likes in two years (shown below).

On July 31st, 2020, TikToker^[9] Angie Cunnington created an original sound and video that went back to the roots of the first one, with her asking people what they heard out of a list of words posted on the screen. This original sound has over 11,200 videos using it, with the first^[10] itself receiving 20,000 likes in one year (shown below).