Here’s Why Everyone’s Talking About “Muffins in the Freezer” on TikTok

Anyone who thinks TikTok is only used as a place for bored teens to make funny videos clearly hasn’t been paying very close attention. In the relatively short amount of time the app has been available, people have used TikTok to make poignant social commentary and effect actual change in the world. 

But, yeah, mostly, it’s a place for bored teens to make funny videos. The recent “who put the muffins in the freezer” TikTok trend is the perfect example of a semi-funny thing that has been brought to ultimate meme status thanks to those bored teens. We don’t get it, exactly, but we’re here for it anyway. Here’s what we know about the trend.

So, chances are you came across people on TikTok saying “who in the hell put the muffins in the freezer?” and ended up here. You’d be forgiven for thinking the meme started on TikTok, but from what we can tell, it was actually originally started on Vine (RIP). On May 12, 2020, TikTok user @beanie_br0 uploaded this video (by the way, there’s some NSFW language):

In case you can’t watch it right now, it shows a young kid opening a freezer door, shrieking “what the f--k?!” then asking “who in the hell put the muffins in the freezer?” That’s it. That’s the audio. He does say it in a pretty funny way, though. You can’t deny there’s a catchy rhythm there.

@beanie_br0 isn’t the creator of the original video. It was originally a Vine that gained popularity several years ago (à la “and they were roommates!”). Once @beanie_br0 uploaded the Vine to TikTok, it found a new audience of people who were ready to put their own spin on it and reupload, ad infinitum.

In short order, everyone began posting their own “who put the muffins in the freezer” videos, either lip-syncing the sound or just opening their own freezer doors to reveal muffins. Or something that wasn’t muffins. There aren’t really rules to how people participate in the trend. Soon, there was a new TikTok sound featuring a “who put the muffins in the freezer” song, and that took off.

People started saying they put the muffins in the freezer. People made new accounts claiming to be the muffin freezer. Everyone is talking about and singing about muffins in freezers. It reminds us of that Twitter trend awhile back when everyone was riffing on William Carlos Williams’ poem “This Is Just to Say” and creating their own icebox-plums poems. Something about cold food apparently gets people’s creativity going.

Anyway, there isn’t really an explanation behind the “muffins in the freezer” trend, per se. It’s just the latest example of people hearing something funny and latching onto it. People have been reacting this way to funny memes since even before we had the internet. If it’s driving you crazy, though, you can rest assured that soon enough, this meme will be replaced by something completely different. Such is life.