Nelking

About

Nelking refers to chugging or drinking beer in a frat-party sense inspired by the Nelk Boys podcast in 2017. The term took off in memes on TikTok in early 2022 when college and high school men on the platform used the iBeer app to "nelk" at school or in front of their parents. The slang term is often paired with, "Full Send": another Nelk Boys catchphrase.

Origin

Starting in late 2017, the Nelk Boys posted multiple YouTube videos of them drinking beers in class, or other nonsensical settings, as a public prank. For instance, on October 15th, 2017, they posted a video titled, "DRINKING BEERS IN LECTURES PRANK!" which earned roughly 5.3 million views and 115,000 likes over the course of five years (shown below, left). On October 26th, 2017, they posted a similar prank video of them drinking beers in a college library, earning roughly 2.2 million views and 65,000 likes in the same amount of time (shown below, right).

Spread

Chugging beers in public became a common theme on the Nelk Boys' channel, which carried into the early 2020s. In mid-2021, the term "nelking" started to manifest online, associated with drinking beers and partying. For instance, on July 4th, 2021, TikToker^[1] all_cap posted a video of him and his friend, "NELKING Hard," which earned roughly 827,000 plays and 159,800 likes in nine months (shown below, left). On July 17th, 2021, TikToker^[2] bp.capalot posted a video that also namedropped "nelking" and earned roughly 1,700 plays in nine months (shown below, right).

The term "nelking" was added to Urban Dictionary ^[3] on July 6th, 2021 by the user Jc00c38, who defined it as, "Absolutely fucking birds smoking darts and doing beers!!! Full send" (shown below).

The term and trend didn't receive mass usage, however, until March and April 2022. This was sparked by TikToker^[4] prestonhull3 whose video, posted on March 23rd, 2022, earned roughly 320,200 plays and 48,300 likes in one month (shown below, left). On April 8th, 2022, TikToker^[5] tripdaddybeau posted a video that showed him in his dorm room chugging a fake beer on the iPhone app, iBeer. He put text overlay on the video reading, "Cant talk rn the boys and I are nelking." The video earned roughly 724,200 plays and 76,100 likes in two weeks (shown below, right).

In the days following, other TikTokers added to the iBeer trend. For instance, on April 11th, 2022, TikToker^[6] drew_davisss posted a video that earned roughly 824,600 plays and 80,700 likes in 10 days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References