About

Day and Night Messages refers to a trend on TikTok in which TikTokers present an on-screen text message, coloring certain letters or words in black and others in white, then turn off their lights, making the black text vanish to create a new sentence. The trend is similar to the S[he] Be[lie]ve[d] meme format and began in late February 2021, reaching TikTok's trending page in early March under the hashtag #dayandnight.

Origin

On February 24th, 2021, TikToker^[1] @chrisquashie uploaded a video in which he displays the phrase "I am not horny" via on-screen text with the word "not" in black text. He then turns off the lights, causing the "not" to disappear. Allegedly, the video gained around 1 million views before being removed.

On February 26th, the video was removed by TikTok moderators for "Adult nudity and sexual activity" according to a video uploaded by the TikToker that day in which he expressed frustration over them removing his "most popular video" for what he sees as unfair reasons (shown below).

The success of @chirsquashie's video inspired a number of other TikTokers to follow the trend, often set to Kid Cudi's "Day N' Nite." For example, on February 25th, TikToker^[2] @big.man.miles uploaded a video in which he displays the text "I am NOT attracted to the mom from 'The Incredibles'" with the word "not" in black, garnering over 1.2 million views in a week and representing one of the earliest successful videos following the trend (shown below).

Spread

Over the next week, a number of videos following the trend, set to the song "Day N' Nite," garnered viral attention. On February 26th, TikToker^[3] @annaxsitar uploaded a video in which she writes "You are NOT my only friend," the word "not" in black, garnering over 6.4 million views in a week (shown below, left). On February 27th, TikToker^[4] @matt.beans uploaded a video in which he writes "you're pretty ugly" with "ugly" in black, garnering over 5.9 million views in six days (shown below, right).

On the same day, TikToker^[5] @indecisivejack uploaded a video in which he reveals the words "he's Ron" from the phrase "She's Broken" then shows an image of Harry Potter character Ron Weasely, garnering over 6.4 million views in six days (shown below).

During the first week of March, the hashtag #dayandnight hit TikTok's trending page, collecting videos following the trend, with videos under the hashtag gaining over 181 million views by March 5th.

On March 2nd, TikToker^[6] @yaboyservy uploaded a video in which he writes "You're the ugly sibling" with random letters in black, appearing as if he's going to turn off the lights but then bait-and-switches and doesn't, garnering over 15.8 million views in three days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References