Instagram Reels used to be the place where TikTok trends went to die.
It was the retirement home where yuppies would calm their souls with cashmere-soft capybaras and virtuous meal hacks, or get a mild buzz from aspirational travel montages and clips lifted from TV shows like Breaking Bad. But slowly this leftovers lounge became a shortform sideshow, convulsing with lunacy.
Now cats are being used as props for deforestation propaganda and next-gen glitch art morphs the world into a Fibonacci fever dream. It’s the breeding ground for “Italian brainrot,” an expansive cinematic universe of AI-generated characters with robotic Italian accents like Tralalero Tralala, a three-legged shark wearing Nike shoes; Bombardino Crocodilo, a crocodile with the body of an attack helicopter; and an anthropomorphic plank named Tung Tung Tung Sahur.
For much of its lifespan since Meta unveiled Reels in 2020, there was no distinct sonic ecosystem within the platform; TikTok has always been the short-form hub for music. But now there’s an increasingly large field of songs you could conceivably call “Reels music.”
While I always feel bad reducing artists to their presence on tech platforms, these users actively cater to a formula they see working for others and try to hijack the algorithm by all sorts of uncanny, mercenary means.
I’m talking about people like Broke Boi Swagg, a content churner who posts every clip they make a dozen times in a row with minuscule variations of on-screen texts like, “POV: You just found a young black rapper inspired by Autism and Kawaii.” Or: “I quit my two jobs to make White Women Music Was it Worth it?” and the song is them moaning about being “so kawaii.”
Scroll for a few minutes and you’ll encounter a secret chamber of oddities.
Say hello to DANNI SNOW, a rapper from Vancouver Island whose Spotify says he channels the energy of Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Cranberries. But on the Reels promoting his music, he writes text like, “POV: you just found a 38 yr old rapper heavily inspired by Nettspend” and “POV: you found a 38 yr old virgin rapping faster than Eminem.”
His Reels have amassed millions of views while his songs only have a cumulative 30,000 streams; the promo has displaced the product. There’s Blizzi Boi, a man who’s posted basically the exact same clip months apart and gotten hundreds of thousands of views every time: “40+ YEAR OLD PLUGGNB RAPPER. DID UNC SNAP?”
Even the fans are getting sick of it: “17 but i’ll be 41 when this dude stops promoting this song,” one person wrote. “Can’t wait to see you again in 10 scrolls,” another said.
