Children’s TV staple, confusingly tall musician, LGBTQ icon: Peppa Pig has been everywhere lately – and now she’s all over TikTok, the latest social media platform teens have swamped to across the globe.
Peppa Pig’s television show (of the same name) has been playing since 2004, and in that time has brought in more than $1 billion in global revenue a year. There’s Peppa Pig live tours, there’s Peppa Pig merch. If you can imagine it, you can probably Peppa Pig it.
Now, along with the somewhat foreboding hashtag #ThePig, she’s showing up in unexpected places on TikTok, in a series of carefully curated videos uploaded en masse, racking up hundreds of thousands of views.
It all started in July, when a kid filmed himself biting into a chocolate egg and pulling out a Peppa figurine. “Peppa, what are you doing in my chocolate?” he asks, in a way that bounces around in the canyons of your mind for no distinct reason at all. In four weeks, that video has almost 900,000 likes and no doubt millions of views.
Since then, others have added to the phenomenon. What started with a cute figurine of a pig has since devolved into an insane montage of hide-and-seek, as Peppa shows up in computer screens, in frying pans, and in the workstations of sandwich artists everywhere.
Of course, Peppa has been trending for just about all year now. Just a few days ago, YouTuber and comedian Miranda Sings uploaded a tutorial where she turned herself into a real, physical manifestation of Peppa. So now you’ve seen that.
turning myself into peppa pig! https://t.co/BCHCIdMISH pic.twitter.com/1nICej13Ko
— Miranda Sings (@MirandaSings) July 30, 2019
Other than all of that, I don’t know what else to tell you. This is the reality of the dark world we have created for ourselves, one where children’s characters are latched onto in the form of bizarre, erratic fandom. It is the end result of continued generations obsessed with nostalgia. Also, it is kind of funny. And deeply, deeply upsetting.
