About

Rice Ball Babies (赤ちゃんおにぎり in Japanese) is a photo fad that involves squishing a young child's face into a triangular shape to resemble the outline of the traditional Japanese food rice balls.

Origin

On June 17th, 2015, Japanese comedian Masahiro Ehara tweeted several photographs in which he is shown squishing his children's faces into a triangle (shown below).^[1] Within six months, the tweets gained over 70,000 retweets combined.

Spread

In the coming months, other Twitter users posted similar photographs in which children's faces are squeezed into a triangle shape (shown below).

On July 8th, the Japanese variety show Disco Star (ディスコ☆スター) aired a segment on the photo fad (shown below, left).^[2] On July 9th, Ehara posted a photo in which he is shown attempting to squeeze his adult friend's face into a triangle shape (shown below, right). On December 9th, 2015, the news sites Mashable,^[5] BuzzFeed^[3] and Metro^[4] published articles about the photo fad.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References