If you’ve been on TikTok the past few days, you probably have a very specific song by Pinkpantheress stuck in your head.
Pinkpantheress says the song is about buying illegal drugs or using a male escort, but you wouldn’t know that by the way TikTok users have approached the viral trend. Instead, they’re using “Illegal” by Pinkpantheress to talk about the intricacies of their relationships — as intricate as you can get in a 13-second video, at least.
It goes like this: One person records shaking hands with another while they lipsync the first line, “My name is Pink and I’m really glad to meet you,” and overlay it with text like, “I grew up with strict parents.”
The camera shifts, and the other person records shaking hands to, “You’re recommended to me by some people” with more text overlayed that shows how the two people are different, like “I grew up with chill parents.”
It shifts back to the first person, hands still shaking, to, “Hey! OoOooOooOooo is this illegal?” with an acknowledgment that they’re dating now.
Mashable Trend Report
And then back to the other person who lipsyncs, “Hey! OoOooOooOooo it feels illegal.” That’s it. That’s the whole trend.
The joke is: “is this illegal?” — meaning, “this feels so different it must be wrong.” For instance, one by couple creators Taylor and Sophia that reads, “*raised in a water only family*,” then “*raised in an appetizer and soda family*,” followed by “is this illegal?” and “it feels illegal.”
The sound has been used in over 841,000 TikTok videos, including a Huddy video with 37 million views, a video by Brooke Monk with over 21 million views, and even one with Pinkpantheress herself that has over 36 million views, among other viral videos with the sound.
According to TikTok’s Creator Search Insights, it’s one of the top trending videos on TikTok and has been steadily increasing reach since July 15. Some users are calling it the “illegal trend” which is predominately searched by women aged 18 to 24 years old, according to TikTok’s Creator Search Insights.
Of course, some people are doing it completely independent of the trend and just… playing the song behind whatever b-roll they have on their camera, like this guy from Love Island.
