TikTok is weird. There's no sugarcoating it. One day, you could be scrolling through a bunch of people involved in a mass internet in-joke about some dude on Reddit having sex to the beat of Cbat, and then, suddenly, everyone's arguing about where the cheese is on a Chicago pizza.
The latest trend is in the same boat of what-the-fuck, and it all started because someone uploaded a video of Mario's Koopa dance. If you don't know, the Koopas face the camera and do a little jig when the backing beat hits a certain point. People took this and applied it to the 'real world', making Koopas dance at funerals, during childbirth (throwing their babies aside), and at court, fighting for custody of their children. Probably the ones they chucked on the floor.
One of the most popular videos in the trend, at 1.3 million likes, sees a Koopa child with his mother in mourning, standing in a rainy funeral, likely commemorating a Koopa that Mario mercilessly stomped on and kicked off a cliff, only to happily dance when the beat drops.
Someone else hopped on the trend with an animation showing a Koopa in childbirth about to name their kid. Before they get the chance, the beat drops and they lob it to the side.
These are both animated, but most of the trend revolves around real people bringing the Koopa dance to life. Because if TikTok is known for anything, it's dancing, only this time, taking notes from an old '90s game. And one of these sees a Koopa "cleaning up a murder scene" with frantic despair on their face, only to drop to a completely nonchalant expression as they wave their arms.
The trend got so popular it spawned its own viral duet chain. Duet chains, for those who aren't terminally online, are when people 'react' to a TikTok with their own video, adding to it. A chain means that several TikToks play on the screen at once, all playing into each other. In this case, it's a Koopa judge "presiding over the trial", a Koopa "fighting for full custody of his children in court", and a Koopa "stenographer documenting the trial".
Now you're fully caught up on this bizarre TikTok trend, seeing Koopas lob children after childbirth, dance at court, and clean up murder scenes, you're ready for the best of the lot - a Koopa "getting his rejection letter from music college because he has no sense of musical timing", doing the dance before the beat hits. Genius.
TikTok does this a lot, dredging up old games, memes, videos, clips, and all sorts from aeons ago (read: the '00s, '90s, and earlier, sorry), giving them a new spark of life. And of all the things for TikTok to bring from Mario, a Koopa dance feels fitting.