Kids Didn’t Know Who Diddy Was — But They Turned Him Into a Meme
Since the arrest of Sean Combs in September, it’s been impossible to scroll very far on Twitter, TikTok, or Instagram without running into a macabre joke about the rapper and entrepreneur better known as Diddy. Everything from his alleged freak-offs to the bottles of baby oil seized by authorities at Combs’ home has become fodder for jokes from teenagers on the internet. In a recent report on the online game Roblox, which is notably popular amongst kids, researchers found over 600 “Diddy” themed games, including “Survive Diddy” and various “Diddy Party” simulators.
Most of these kids likely had limited knowledge of Combs before his arrest last month in New York City, where he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and transportation to engage in prostitution. For those born in the 2000s, Diddy’s cultural ubiquity reached its peak when they were still toddlers. Now, the details emerging about the disgraced hip-hop mogul, including the seizure of the now infamous “thousands” of bottles of baby oil at his home, as well as reports of videotapes of his so-called “freak-offs,” during which Diddy would allegedly drug guests and engage in sex acts, are shaping their perspective. It appears that a generation coming of age today has turned him into a shorthand for the boogeyman.
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The trend has gotten so widespread that teachers have taken to TikTok to lament the prevalence of Diddy jokes in the classroom. A teacher went viral last month after a list of “banned” words in their classroom started making the rounds online. Alongside Gen Alpha stalwarts like skibidi toilet and rizz, Diddy’s name was right there. Many teachers on the so-called #teachertok have shared similar videos. Riaan duRand, a teacher in South Africa, went viral on TikTok earlier this month after invoking Diddy as a threat in his high school classroom. “Next person to talk goes on Diddy’s list,” he announces to the noisy class, which immediately goes quiet.
“They don’t say ‘no homo’ anymore. At our school, it’s now turned into ‘no Diddy,’” he tells me over the phone. “When the Diddy story just came out, the school was completely fascinated by the story, and this was before we knew that it involved minors. So it was just bottles of baby oil, it was tunnels, and everybody was talking about it.”
DuRand says he was inspired by another inescapable viral trend, “English or Spanish,” initially made popular by the TikToker, @alfonsopinpon_ who would walk up to people and ask them “English or Spanish?” and reply in either language they chose: “Whoever moves first is gay.” Clips of men standing stone frozen in response quickly went viral. “English or Spanish was trending a lot. And I thought, well, I’m going to do the new English or Spanish. And I said, ‘Well, if you guys don’t keep quiet now, you are the ones on Diddy’s list.’ And the whole class just went quiet.”
After the video went viral, duRand says he went back and asked his students if they even who Diddy was: “I was like, ‘Guys, how many of you actually knew who Diddy was before the story came out?’ And there were about five or six who said they knew who he was, but it’s really thrust him into the limelight with the young generation.”
Not everyone thinks the jokes are funny, of course. Diddy’s alleged crimes are horrific, and duRand says he faced a good deal of backlash for seemingly making light of a serious situation. “It’s definitely opened up discussions in class, debating about what was funny and what is not funny about it,” he says. “But I don’t think teenagers think beyond the bottle of baby oil. They don’t think beyond the meme.”
Ryan Broderick, who runs the Substack culture newsletter Garbage Day, points to teens’ propensity for dark humor as the reason it seems like Diddy memes have taken over the internet. “There are people who still have T-shirts that say ‘Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.’ I think when you’re dealing with an age group as young as your average TikTok user, they have both an interest in current events and also they sort of love edgy humor. I think this is true for every cohort of young people online,” he says. “This is sort of classic stuff.”
Today’s young people, infinitely more plugged in than prior generations, are interpreting the world around them in familiar, albeit accelerated ways. Broderick, who is a millennial, says there’s a direct corollary to Michael Jackson, who was the butt of many high school jokes when he was younger. “It might just be that these things move faster just because media moves faster. I remember all kinds of Michael Jackson jokes in high school and middle school, but culture was not as fast, and there wasn’t really a venue for making content the same way,” he says. “It’s a lot easier now to go find out what everyone’s talking about. Whereas 20 years ago, you could not just easily Google a new meme or a new piece of slang or the new story that everyone’s ripping on in class or whatever. There’s much more access now to that sort of thing, which I think means it moves faster as well.”
It’s why duRand started his TikTok channel in the first place. “I’ve got to be up-to-date with what’s going on to be able to relate to my kids,” he explains. “You’ve got to be able to connect with your kids on their level. And that’s why I do the TikTok and try to know what’s going on.” And for anyone concerned that teenagers’ fascination with Diddy is a sign of a larger moral failing, even kids seem to know when a joke is dead. DuRand says this week’s new revelations of a 10-year-old aspiring rapper who Diddy allegedly drugged and raped in a New York City hotel during an audition in 2005 have soured the mood on the jokes. “I think especially when the [new] allegations came out, that very much killed the vibe.”
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