A bowl of fruit has set off something big — berry, berry big — on social media.
On Feb. 5, TikTok user @pr4yforgabs posted a short and sweet video of a bowl of chocolate-covered strawberries that’s swept the platform, garnering over 191 million views and 27 million likes at the time of publication.
In the video, set to Bobby Caldwell’s 1978 song “What You Won’t Do for Love” the user simply shows off the bowl of chocolate-drizzled strawberries using on-the-beat close-ups with flash.
There’s no description, explanation or caption other than the hashtags #fy, #foryou, #strawberry, #chocolate and #chocolatecoveredstrawberries. User @pr4yforgabs did not respond to requests for comment.
It was the first of the user’s videos to go viral, though now that it has seen such astounding success, the rest of their videos — including follow-up videos of pancakes and frozen fruit and a tutorial on how to make the famous chocolate-covered strawberries — have amassed millions of views.
The video is part of a trend where folks show off the foods they love — like pomegranate seeds, crepes and Nutella, ramen, Oreo pancakes and more — by zooming in on them with the flash on to Caldwell’s tune. Some videos leave the food world and feature their pets, loved ones and more. Even Korean pop group Tomorrow X Together has joined in on the trend.
Caldwell’s track has now been used in over 2 million TikToks, including countless videos of this specific trend. On Feb. 24, “What You Won’t Do for Love” reached No. 1 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50, despite being released nearly 50 years ago, becoming the latest example of TikTok’s penchant for putting vintage music back in the spotlight. Unfortunately, Caldwell is no longer around to see the renaissance of his song — he died in 2023.
The comments section for the chocolate-covered strawberry video is buzzing, to be sure, with over 276,000 comments from people mostly expressing disbelief at the amount of views the video has racked up and weighing in on what might be happening.
“189.7M views for chocolate covered strawstrawberries??😭 ( love them tho),” commented one confused user.
“19.6M FOR STRAWBERRY WITH CHOCOLATE THAT IS INSANE,” wrote another person, who must be even more shocked now that it has almost 8 million more likes.
“Last time I saw this it was at 26.6 and now it’s at 27.5 like what-,” commented another.
“Strawberry chocolate at 26M 😁,” wrote illusionist influencer Zach King, who has the most viewed video of all time on the platform. His TikTok showing his “magic broomstick” ride has over 2.3 billion views — that’s billion with a “B.”
“My whole fyp right now,“ TikToker Katie Ritchie wrote on her short video poking fun at the trend, which has gone viral itself, garnering 36.9 million views.
“Bella Poarch: ❤️63.7M / Strawberry chocolate: ❤️26.3M,” wrote one TikTok commenter, calling attention to the current most-liked TikTok video of all time: Poarch lip-syncing and head-bobbing to British rapper Millie B’s “M to the B.”
This has caused people to revisit Poarch’s 2020 video and leave comments like, “Who came from the strawberry chocolate video?”
Why is a simple video of chocolate-covered strawberries going so viral?
Many comments on the chocolate-covered strawberries video express confusion at the video’s extreme virality, so one TikToker shared her theory as to what might be happening.
“We’re in an age of TikTok where everyone is trying to be a creator,” TikToker @sammi.social says in her video, adding that a lot of users are trying to come up with something new, past the dance challenges and lip syncs users are used to seeing on the platform. “This falls under the category of irreverent humor and s---posting, so it feels completely different to what you’re probably seeing on your For You page.”
The TikToker says that as soon as this started to get popular just on its own smooth and chocolaty merits, other elements came into play.
“Now we have an added layer which is people wondering why this got so popular, because of that most of the comments are either saying why did this get so popular?” she says, adding that the comment “remind me to come back” appears frequently on videos that users wish to make even more popular. “Think of the egg on Instagram that got more likes than Kylie Jenner. People want to be a part of something … that feels very anti-establishment right now.”
Duncan Ware, CEO and founder of Influentially, an influencer marketing firm, echoes the sentiment that TikTok viewers might be looking for something “fresh” right now — but that luck also plays a part in the video’s virality.
“The disproportionate success of this video shows how unpredictable viewer response can be. Even similar content may not achieve the same results,” says Ware. “TikTok’s algorithm can rapidly amplify videos it deems interesting. It’s likely that early positive engagement — likes, shares, long watch times — led the algorithm to promote the strawberries video to an ever-wider audience.”
Additionally, according to another expert, it may also have to do with the age of the song — and the age of TikTok’s user base.
“We saw this during the pandemic: People trying to look at going back to simpler times of life and utilizing nostalgia. It’s a very powerful sort of principle on social media,” Ari Lightman, professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, tells TODAY.com. He adds that trends like cottagecore and sourdough were signs that people gravitate to retro activities and aesthetics in stressful times.
“I think perhaps, you know, in terms of other videos utilizing R&B tracks and those sorts of things bring back a simpler time,” Lightman says. “Old things that a lot of folks might not have been exposed to or now become new, and things become trendy and hip. It’s a cyclical wave.”