Chinese Restaurants in the Hood Be Like

Submission 23,734

Part of a series on Hood Irony. [View Related Entries]

About

Chinese Restaurants in the Hood Be Like refers to a series of exploitable video re-edits of a TikTok originally posted in April 2021. The original video received lots of backlash on TikTok due to its alleged racist undertones. In August 2021, the original TikTok began being re-edited on iFunny and Instagram, mostly playing into the absurdity of the original video's premise and delivery, becoming an exploitable format for memes.

Origin

On April 3rd, 2021, TikToker^[1] @gloveeofficial posted the original, now-deleted TikTok discussing what "Chinese restaurants in the hood be like." On April 4th, YouTuber BLOCKBOISTEVE • then reuploaded the viral video (shown below).

Spread

After the TikTok was posted on April 3rd, in the days following, the TikTok received many stitches and duets using the audio. The small trend on the platform began to accumulate, with some versions receiving up to 249,000 likes (shown below, left).^[2] However, with the popularity of the TikTok and trend began receiving backlash due to what some suggested were racist undertones of its sentiment. A new trend began to develop around the video of TikTokers dueting or stitching it to outline what was politically incorrect and offensive about it (shown below, right).^[3] The TikTok was soon deleted by @gloveeofficial sometime in mid-April.

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6947820143066025222

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6948834796340514054

The TikTok wouldn't receive much more attention until August 3rd, 2021, when iFunny^[4] user @Eivor posted a new version of the video adding in Vine boom sounds to the otherwise vacant audio (shown below). The video wasn't featured on iFunny but received roughly 5,000 likes regardless over the course of one week.

After this new, ironic rebranding of the video, capitalizing on the awkwardness of the original audio and terrible Chinese accent, the original TikTok was remixed into many different iterations across iFunny^[5]^[6] and Instagram at the beginning of August 2021 (examples shown below). The videos eventually made their way to YouTube, being posted into compilations.