Charleston White Staring

About

Charleston White Staring refers to a video of YouTuber and influencer Charleston White on a bus with streamer Adin Ross and others looking sad and pissed while everyone else is laughing. The camera also moves closer to his face. The video's original context was that Ross was "trolling" White by playing a Theo Von song. In mid-2023, the video became a meme template on TikTok and elsewhere, often paired with a song saying, "No one ever saw me cry, until I left the party the other night." Captions most often followed the phrasal templates "in front of the hoes" or "around the hoes," using White's expression to portray being made fun of and embarrassed in a social situation with desirable women around.

Origin

On August 8th, 2023, influencer Charleston White was on Adin Ross' Kick stream. At one moment, he was on a bus with Ross, Iziprime and others who were playing a song by late rapper Theo Von. Overall, White looked unhappy. The clip was added to YouTube^[1] by Adin Ross Clips on August 8th, where at the 1:07-minute mark, the camera came close to White's face while Iziprime is dancing and everyone else is laughing (shown below). The video gained roughly 64,400 views over the course of nine days.

The aforementioned clip gained memetic usage once TikTokers started adding captions to it in the week that followed. Currently, the first discovered memes using the sound were posted on August 13th, 2023. One was posted by TikToker^[2] @wynter2shiesty, who captioned it, "Me looking at bro after he is told the hoes abt are 600+ hours on fortnite," gaining roughly 2.4 million plays and 449,900 likes in four days (shown below, left). The other was posted by TikToker^[3] @xvixiy, who used a similar caption about the game Rust, gaining roughly 1 million plays and 149,600 likes in four days (shown below, right).

Spread

Going into August 2023, more video creators added to the meme's primary TikTok sound,^[4] which amassed over 5,800 posts by August 17th, 2023. For instance, on August 14th, TikToker^[5] @schizob0b posted another "around the hoes" iteration, gaining roughly 1.9 million plays and 430,900 likes in three days (shown below, left). On August 15th, TikToker^[6] @nolimitdj_ wrote, "Me looking at bro after he told the ugly hoes they can smoke with us," gaining roughly 2.3 million plays and 497,700 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Usage of the meme soon spread elsewhere, such as in a post shared by X^[7] user @OvOBrezzzy on August 16th, 2023, that captioned a still image of White in the video with, "When bro says 'U still need my hotspot' in front of the hoes," gaining roughly 41,700 likes in one day (shown below). Despite being the first viral usage on X,^[7] @OvOBrezzzy stole the joke from a TikToker^[8] named @clownxity whose video was uploaded two days prior.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References