Playboianto / Me and the Gang If We Were In an Anime

About

Playboyanto is a TikToker and a shitposter who uses footage of several obese and conventionally unattractive people to create memes about anime fans. In videos posted on the account, the main character (sometimes referred to as "cute anime boy") and several recurring characters partake in various popular anime TikTok trends, reaffirming fandom generalization memes about weaboos.

Online History

TikTok account @playboyanto (previously @antosolos) posted its first video on August 6th, 2022.^[1] The account originally posted fan vs. enjoyer memes that used footage of anime fans before switching to its current theme.^[2]

Starting on August 11th, the account started using footage of an obese man with a neckbeard, pairing it with cringy meme formats, tagging the videos with hashtags such as "#animetok," "#waifu" and "#hasangoat."^[3] The first such video received over 5.3 million views and 766,000 likes in two months (shown below).

The primary character, sometimes referred to as "cute anime boy," usually appears at the start of the videos as the prompt is shown, drinking water from a bottle.

In the posts that followed, @playboianto added several recurring characters, including Chris the Simp, Jacob the Bad Boy and Lucy (examples seen below).

On September 24th, 2022, @playboianto posted a video^[4] captioned "Me and the gang if we were in an anime" that gained over 776,000 likes and went viral on social media in the following weeks (shown below, left). On October 22nd, @playboianto posted another video^[5] based on the prompt, which gained over 10.6 million views and 992,000 likes on TikTok in five days (shown below, right), also becoming widely circulated online in the following days.

Search Interest

External References