Balling Up Rules

About

Balling Up Rules or In Toronto We Literally Have Balling Up Rules is a viral video where a Toronto woman explains the city's "balling up rules," meaning rules for smoking marijuana, using the "Toronto accent" and well-known Torontonian slang terms throughout, many terms of which are derived from Jamaican patois. The video was posted to TikTok in May 2022 and went viral over the course of the month, the term "balling up rules" later becoming a spam comment on the platform.

Origin

The term "balling up" was defined on Urban Dictionary^[1] on June 9th, 2020 as "what you say when you’re smoking weed or getting high," with a prior 2018 definition reading, "A Toronto slang word for smoking marijuana." On May 15th, 2022, TikToker^[2] @theofficialplushh posted a video captioned, "Toronto literally has balling up rules" where she describes Toronto, Canada's "balling up rules" using a variety of popular Toronto slang words, many of which are derived from Jamaican patois (shown below). The video gained over 1.2 million views in a month.

In Toronto we literally have balling up rules. If the spliff is ita, don't even pass it to me. If we link to ball up and you don't even have your own, like I – I'm not passing my ting to you, styll. Please, if you put a filter on your splizzy or your blizzy, no don't even pass that shit to me. And everyone knows like, if you don't really like the person you better have your own fully splizzy, you know, because we're not sharing. If your grabba smells funny, and we all know that one person who swears they have the best grabba and then it smells like crazy bad, like you know it's not hot, I'm not smoking it. Leave in the comments what other rules about balling up y'all have.

Spread

On May 24th, 2022, Toronto-based Instagram^[3] page 6ixbuzztv posted the video, gaining over 330,000 views and 8,400 likes in two weeks. In June, the TikTok upload's original sound became the source of lip dubs and the video became the subject of stitch reactions. For example, on May 28th, TikToker^[4] @martinangeltv posted a Stitch saying Torontonians who talk like her make other Torontonians want to kill themselves, gaining over 980,000 views in two weeks (shown below).

On June 2nd, TikToker^[5] @sspyne posted a video lip dubbing to the audio, gaining over 260,000 views in a week (shown below, left). On June 8th, TikToker^[6] @toksade posted a video to the sound where he strikes a shocked reaction under the caption, "Me when the spilff is ita," gaining over 193,000 views in two days (shown below, right). Phrases using the term "balling up rules" also became a spam comment on the platform.

Jokes about Toronto's balling up rules also spread to Twitter. For example, on June 9th, Twitter^[7] user @brendan905 posted, "*if you’re from toronto don’t read this because you’ll just end up moving here / in hamilton we literally don’t have balling up rules," gaining roughly 60 likes in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References