Don’t Let This Flop

From sea shanties to “Drivers License” to a lovable elderly pug to Swifties roasting the shit out of Jake Gyllenhaal, 2021 was a whirlwind on our favorite clock app. In honor of the close of this (honestly incredibly hectic) year, DLTF cohosts Brittany Spanos and Ej Dickson did a special end-of-year interview with RS Twitch host Charlie Cooper talking about what we loved this year (and what we could have done without).

Don’t Let This Flop is a weekly podcast from Rolling Stone, centered around a roundup of this week in TikTok trends and memes, from dances to recipes to makeup challenges to creepy viral videos to celebrity videos to grassroots campaigns intended to raise awareness of social issues. Join hosts Brittany Spanos and EJ Dickson as they unpack their significance, with special guests to break down the latest trends in TikTok. Some of these stories will be silly; some will be more serious. All will have wider implications outside the world of TikTok.

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On TikTok, there perhaps is no insult more devastating than to be told by a teenager that your content is cringe. If this is the case, then the Jonas Brothers and the White House had quite a rough week. The pop trio teamed up with the Biden administration for a quick TikTok promoting the importance of vaccines by using the Bing Bong audio from a viral video by the YouTube channel SideTalk. On this week’s episode, we discuss the Biden/JoBros collab, as well as PageantTok in honor of the 100th anniversary of Miss America (you can read Dickson's dispatch from the event here), secret fuckboy train enthusiasts, the "Gorgeous Gorgeous Girls Love Soup" meme, TikTok moral panics, and Nancy Reagan as the original Throat GOAT.

Don’t Let This Flop is a weekly podcast from Rolling Stone, centered around a roundup of this week in TikTok trends and memes, from dances to recipes to makeup challenges to creepy viral videos to celebrity videos to grassroots campaigns intended to raise awareness of social issues. Join hosts Brittany Spanos and EJ Dickson as they unpack their significance, with special guests to break down the latest trends in TikTok. Some of these stories will be silly; some will be more serious. All will have wider implications outside the world of TikTok.

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TikTok is not exactly the most sex-positive app, yet sex-worker content tends to go viral, even if TikTok would prefer otherwise. The latest example is a trend using an edited version of a line from Jon Lajoie's song "Show Me Your Genitals," in which sex workers show off their earnings with the audio, "Men are stupid and I don't respect them." We also discuss the resurgence of the One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer groupie communities, with special guest, music writer and columnist Larisha Paul, weighing in on the early days of both fandoms. Other topics include the return of Couch Guy, Leonardo DiCaprio dating age limits, French exchange students and a Himbo of the Week with exceptional whipped cream-licking skills.

Don’t Let This Flop is a weekly podcast from Rolling Stone, centered around a roundup of this week in TikTok trends and memes, from dances to recipes to makeup challenges to creepy viral videos to celebrity videos to grassroots campaigns intended to raise awareness of social issues. Join hosts Brittany Spanos and EJ Dickson as they unpack their significance, with special guests to break down the latest trends in TikTok. Some of these stories will be silly; some will be more serious. All will have wider implications outside the world of TikTok.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this week's episode of Don't Let This Flop, cohosts Brittany Spanos and Ej Dickson discuss the breakup of Anthony Ramos and Jasmine Cephas Jones in their segment What Are Straight People Doing?, as well as TikTok's obsession with Hamilton and how NYU Tisch kids get over heartache (spoiler: obnoxiously). They also discuss Spotify Unwrapped (a.k.a. the worst day of the year on the internet), a Megan Thee Stallion mashup with Adele's "Water on the Bridge," and the roots of Bing-Bong, the meme taking over everyone's For You pages. 

Don’t Let This Flop is a weekly podcast from Rolling Stone, centered around a roundup of this week in TikTok trends and memes, from dances to recipes to makeup challenges to creepy viral videos to celebrity videos to grassroots campaigns intended to raise awareness of social issues. Join hosts Brittany Spanos and EJ Dickson as they unpack their significance, with special guests to break down the latest trends in TikTok. Some of these stories will be silly; some will be more serious. All will have wider implications outside the world of TikTok.

If you love the Bing-Bong meme, please visit this GoFundMe for one of the stars of the original video, who is currently unhoused: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-tj-out-the-streets

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For DLTF's very special holiday episode, cohosts Brittany Spanos and Ej Dickson are doing an expanded version of their weekly Himbo of the Week segment, in which they celebrate the hot men of TikTok. From mustachioed wilderness explorers and ASMRtists to sweatpants-wearing shirtless Irish-Nigerian models to tattoo artists to axe-wielding, muscle-bound fitness influencers who spout motivational bullshit on Twitter, we're giving thanks to the sexy lugs of social media who make our For You pages what they are.

Don’t Let This Flop is a weekly podcast from Rolling Stone, centered around a roundup of this week in TikTok trends and memes, from dances to recipes to makeup challenges to creepy viral videos to celebrity videos to grassroots campaigns intended to raise awareness of social issues. Join hosts Brittany Spanos and EJ Dickson as they unpack their significance, with special guests to break down the latest trends in TikTok. Some of these stories will be silly; some will be more serious. All will have wider implications outside the world of TikTok.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On TikTok, Francis Bourgeois — a gleeful young man who is introducing a new generation to the old-school art of trainspotting — has amassed 1.5 million followers with his highly enthusiastic posts sharing his love of trains. With his trusty GoPro-style camera in tow, he celebrates the glory of "marvelous locos" across Great Britain (including one named Dick Mabbutt) taking followers behind the scenes of railway stations and depots. Other topics discussed on this episode include lesbian Canadian ceramicists, Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello's breakup, the chaotic energy of Hinge's new audio feature (also, which celebrities Brittany has spotted on Raya), and the relative hygiene of deepthroating a 12-foot gummy snake.

Don’t Let This Flop is a weekly podcast from Rolling Stone, centered around a roundup of this week in TikTok trends and memes, from dances to recipes to makeup challenges to creepy viral videos to celebrity videos to grassroots campaigns intended to raise awareness of social issues. Join hosts Brittany Spanos and EJ Dickson as they unpack their significance, with a special guests to break down the latest trends in TikTok. Some of these stories will be silly; some will be more serious. All will have wider implications outside the world of TikTok.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the biggest trends on TikTok over the past few weeks is a 2007 video of Hilary Duff dancing poorly to a perfume ad on the Today Show. The actor and singer recently made a resurgence in a viral clip of the morning show performance to promote her perfume With Love...by Hilary Duff, as well as the eponymous single she released with the fragrance. Another video, a performance of the single with the same choreography on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, has also gone wildly viral, spawning the Hilary Duff Challenge.

On this week in Don't Let This Flop, co-hosts Brittany Spanos and Ej Dickson discuss Duff, "With Love" and the resurgence of early-aughts culture in general (including the return of celeb perfume lines!), as well as Astroworld Satanic Panic conspiracy theories, the ubiquity of Erika the Money Lawyer and her consumerist hacks, and of course, the emotional destruction wrought by the release of Taylor Swift's Red (Taylor's version!). Is Jake Gyllenhaal doing OK this week? Honestly, who cares.

Don’t Let This Flop is a weekly podcast from Rolling Stone, centered around a roundup of this week in TikTok trends and memes, from dances to recipes to makeup challenges to creepy viral videos to celebrity videos to grassroots campaigns intended to raise awareness of social issues. Join hosts Brittany Spanos and EJ Dickson as they unpack their significance, with a special guests to break down the latest trends in TikTok. Some of these stories will be silly; some will be more serious. All will have wider implications outside the world of TikTok.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's no secret that Ed Sheeran has historically been considered, for lack of a better term, uncool. The Brit's musical output skews on the schmaltzier side, and tracks like "Perfect" and "Thinking Out Loud" have traditionally been considered wedding dance songs or the soundtrack for freshman high schoolers' first experience with digital penetration. Yet a new wave of fans on TikTok are begging the question: is Ed Sheeran actually awesome?

On this week's Don't Let This Flop, co-hosts Spanos and Dickson discuss the impending "Ed Sheeranaissance," as well as Tommy Lee and John Travolta's shocking cookies-and-lemonade bromance, and talk to Himbo of the Week Sampson Gaglione (best known as the Shirtless Guy who Reacts to Thirsty Comments About Him) about how he accidentally built a feminist community on TikTok. Inspired by TikTokers' obsession with Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian's fledging, highly public relationship, they also play a very special game with podcast editor Dan Stein celebrating Davidson's penis.

Don’t Let This Flop is a weekly podcast from Rolling Stone, centered around a roundup of this week in TikTok trends and memes, from dances to recipes to makeup challenges to creepy viral videos to celebrity videos to grassroots campaigns intended to raise awareness of social issues. Join hosts Brittany Spanos and EJ Dickson as they unpack their significance, with a special guests to break down the latest trends in TikTok. Some of these stories will be silly; some will be more serious. All will have wider implications outside the world of TikTok. 

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TikTok is a platform populated primarily by teenagers, a demographic that can smell inauthenticity a mile away. So as it becomes more mainstream, how can brands gain traction on it? This week on Don't Let This Flop, cohosts Brittany Spanos and Ej Dickson spoke to the TikTok voice behind the DuoLingo owl itself, Zaria Parvez, the social media coordinator for DuoLingo, asking such burning questions as how brands can thrive on TikTok, whether she's ever gotten in trouble for making the owl too horny, and if the DuoLingo owl has ever taken a human life (she claims it has not.) Other subjects discussed this week are the Italian band Mäneskin, which went viral after winning the Eurovision competition earlier this year; conspiracy theories about Selena Gomez and Chris Evans boinking based on his Instagram stories; hot movers, and Mr. Peanut's butt.

Don’t Let This Flop is a weekly podcast from Rolling Stone, centered around a roundup of this week in TikTok trends and memes, from dances to recipes to makeup challenges to creepy viral videos to celebrity videos to grassroots campaigns intended to raise awareness of social issues. Join hosts Brittany Spanos and EJ Dickson as they unpack their significance, with a special guests to break down the latest trends in TikTok. Some of these stories will be silly; some will be more serious. All will have wider implications outside the world of TikTok.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this week's episode of Don't Let This Flop, cohosts Brittany Spanos and Ej Dickson take on Noodle the Pug — namely, how his oversaturation has effectively canceled him. (Thanks, Today Show.) They also discuss a viral 38-step (!!!) skincare routine that's infuriating thousands of millennial women across the internet, Anna Marie Tendler's triumphant debut on TikTok (teaching us how to put on a duvet cover, no less!), and a Himbo of the Week who believes the correct way to eat guacamole and chips is with a knife.

Don’t Let This Flop is a weekly podcast from Rolling Stone, centered around a roundup of this week in TikTok trends and memes, from dances to recipes to makeup challenges to creepy viral videos to celebrity videos to grassroots campaigns intended to raise awareness of social issues. Join hosts Brittany Spanos and EJ Dickson as they unpack their significance, with a special guests to break down the latest trends in TikTok. Some of these stories will be silly; some will be more serious. All will have wider implications outside the world of TikTok.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices