Have a brand and a social media platform ever cultivated such a strange love-hate relationship as Starbucks and TikTok? First, the zoomers get turned on to the coffee chain with countless videos about custom drinks and secret menu items. Then, employees take to the platform to complain about overwork and weird orders. Now, it's their food that is in the spotlight — specifically, one of its baked goods. Once a gimmick relegated to fashionable bakeries and Pinterest boards, the cake pop is now a popular offering at stores across the country.
However, it's even more popular as a meme. Over the summer and beyond, the bite size treat has not just been for eating. Instead, it's all about squishing it as hard as you can. Oh, and don't leave out the baby voice or the fact that it's someone else's. The trend was started by the aptly named @cakepopguy, where he appears to stop a random woman in the street to destroy her cake pop.
The videos may be stupid, but that doesn't stop there being a hypnotic quality to the cake pop squishing ritual. Like those videos of people cutting up soap or making slime, there's a visual ASMR element to someone crushing up that soft, cakey goodness with a fist. One day, we'll get to eat it without it getting squashed first, but today is not that day.
