Man Frozen While Walking on Street

About

Man Frozen While Walking on Street, also known as Frozen With Sirens Trend or Stuck In Place With Sirens Trend, is a TikTok trend based on a viral video of man in a yellow polo shirt seemingly stuck in place while walking down a street with sirens playing in the background. The original clip was posted to TikTok in 2021. Going into the 2020s, many meme creators gave the video humorous captions, trending alongside other viral videos of street performers in similar mid-walk positions, such as a man wearing a New Orleans Saints jersey. In 2023, the TikTok trend emerged in which people filmed themselves frozen in time like the man in the original video, adding captions mostly based on freezing in an embarrassing or compromising situation.

Origin

On July 26th, 2021, TikToker^[1] @greenkingdrich posted a video of a man who was stuck in place while walking down a street. In the background, police and ambulance sirens can be heard as the camera pans around the frozen man, wearing a yellow polo, white shorts and blue running shoes. Over the course of two years, the video received roughly 1.3 million plays and 265,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

On July 27th, 2021, X/Twitter^[2] user @EBK_Koff reposted the video to the new platform, captioning it, "Nahh bro what drug he off?? son is stuck in time 😭😭," gaining roughly 237,400 likes in two years (shown below). The post gained various viral quotes and replies in the months that followed, such as a post shared by X^[3] user @lledrook on August 4th, writing, "nigga got black beatles playing in his head," in reference to the Mannequin Challenge song, gaining roughly 5,700 likes in two years.

Nahh bro what drug he off?? son is stuck in time 😭😭 pic.twitter.com/qg7sOV4COZ

— Kofi 🏴‍☠️ (@EBK_Koff) July 27, 2021

In 2022, similar videos of street performers doing the frozen, mid-walk stance surfaced on TikTok, such as a video posted by TikToker^[4] @leefolks_ on January 8th, 2022, in which he was wearing a New Orleans Saints football jersey, receiving roughly 782,600 plays and 87,100 likes in one year (shown below, left). Roughly a year and a half later, on September 9th, 2023, TikToker^[5] @hemissmefr2 posted the original video with text reading, "when I see my man while I'm out cheating when I told him I was sleep 3 hours ago," gaining roughly 1.8 million plays and 397,200 likes in nine days (shown below, right).

Going into September 2023, many on the app started to use the TikTok sound^[6] of @hemissmefr2's video, showing videos of themselves frozen in time with humorous captions about being caught in an embarrassing or compromising scenario. For instance, on September 11th, 2023, TikToker^[7] @colin.pearson posted a video of himself with the caption, "me when I said I wasn't going out but was in fact spotted going out," garnering roughly 1.7 million plays and 505,900 likes in one week (shown below).

By September 18th, 2023, the trend's primary TikTok sound^[6] had amassed over 22,100 posts.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References