About

Old People Playing Slots or Old People Pushing Buttons is a viral video of a line of elderly people appearing to play slot machines at a casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, with all of them endlessly clicking a button on their machine. The video was popularized on Twitter in November 2022 after first being posted to TikTok. Many users commented that the clip looked sad while others made jokes about its content, often using it as a reaction in video and GIF caption memes.

Origin

On November 3rd, 2022, TikToker^[2] @nlwestfall posted a video of elderly people endlessly pushing a button on their slot machines at a casino in Las Vegas. The user stated the video was taken before the COVID-19 pandemic. The video gained over 134,000 views on TikTok in four days (shown below).

Spread

The video then went viral after it was reposted to Twitter by user @xooset on November 4th, 2022 (shown below). In three days, the clip gained over 16 million views, thanks in large part to other users quote-tweeting and reposting it to make various jokes.

pic.twitter.com/UGXOunqA1C

— xooset (@xooset) November 4, 2022

Commentary on the video tended to fall into two camps. The first was commentary on how the video seems sad, as well as commentary on how elderly people stereotypically chide younger generations for use of their smartphones. For example, on November 5th, Twitter user @isaiah_bb^[1] tweeted the video was "one of the most unsettling things" he'd ever seen, gaining over 9,000 retweets and 149,000 likes in two days (shown below, top). On November 6th, user @TheCensoredRock joked about the clip by captioning it "You kids and your phones," gaining over 700 retweets and 3,900 likes in one day (shown below, bottom).

“You kids today and your phones” pic.twitter.com/zYBnPwsLke

— Rock (@TheCensoredRock) November 6, 2022

Others recaptioned the clip as a reaction meme. For example, on November 6th, 2022, Twitter^[3] user @zzdoublezz posted a joke about the elderly voting in the upcoming midterm elections in America, gaining over 7,000 retweets and 50,000 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below, top). That same day, user @speeeena joked the video represented his friends and him hitting the "slay" button, gaining over 8,800 retweets and 70,000 likes in a similar timeframe (shown below, bottom).

your grandparents destroying the climate and LGBTQ rights on Tuesday pic.twitter.com/i1Gq0t0Mvw

— Zach Zimmerman (@zzdoublezz) November 6, 2022

Me and my friends hitting the slay button pic.twitter.com/2twVaWpq65

— spena (@speeeena) November 6, 2022

Various Examples

Optimizing dopamine loops pic.twitter.com/1N5QrqPVuA

— Gilp (@The_Gilp) November 5, 2022

Me liking thirst traps of hot gays who will never acknowledge I even exist. pic.twitter.com/e6Vz6sceXm

— k. (@dozygay) November 6, 2022

I be in the voting booth doing fraud like pic.twitter.com/W3sj03afWE

— dr. stupid (@cityafreaks) November 6, 2022

dogshit gambling technique. you can actually win at slots if you don’t do this https://t.co/nB0t76n0Fe

— 71 Years Young (@ByYourLogic) November 5, 2022

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References