Septum Arms

About

Septum Arms is a slang term referring to a person's arms. While there has been much speculation over the definition of the term, with some claiming it means "chubby arms," the term has no confirmed meaning and is nonsense. The term seemingly arose from a comment under a TikTok video by @orlandospeciality criticizing people who make fun of women's arms, in which one user commented about septum piercings, leading the TikTok AI to promote the recommended search term under the video as "septum arms." Videos attempting to decipher the meaning of the term went viral on the app in July 2024.

Origin

On July 15th, 2024, TikToker^[1] @orlandospeciality posted a video where he criticizes people who call women's arms gross, garnering over 12 million views in three days (shown below).

On July 16th, TikToker @daryldixonisaw commented, "What if it's someone with a septum?" critically referring to a person with a septum piercing, garnering over 27,000 likes in two days (shown below, left). This speculatively made the TikTok AI promote the related search term "septum arms" as a blue comment, with numerous comments asking what the term means and why it's recommended to them under the video (example shown below, right).

Spread

Over the following days, TikTokers began making videos asking what septum arms are and speculating on what they could be in the comments, with some concluding that the term refers to chubby arms, while others were aware the term was nonsense. On July 17th, TikToker^[2] @kirkiimad posted a video using the term that gained over 3.5 million views in a day (shown below, left). On the same day, TikToker^[3] @nuumuhuupi posted a video asking what the term means that gained over 700,000 views in a day (shown below, right).

That same day, DailyDot^[4] published an article attempting to define septum arms, coming to the conclusion that the term has no meaning and using comments to back up the hypothesis.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References