TikTok Thirst Trap Search Results Phenomenon

About

The TikTok Thirst Trap Search Results Phenomenon refers to a widely purported online phenomenon that when a user searches anything on the platform TikTok the search engine shows them lewd thirst trap content from female influencers that borders on pornography. Many called the phenomenon a glitch or believed that TikTok was pushing suggestive content. Discourse sprouted from the discovery in mid-2024, peaking in memes posted in September and October 2024. Many of the memes made fun of TikTok's search engine and joked about how typing a single, innocuous word would still produce the horny results. It then became a challenge among TikTokers to find the most innocent and unassuming word possible that still resulted in thirst trap content.

Origin

On July 7th, 2024, TikToker^[1] @imnotgdub posted a video in which he asked his viewers if their TikTok searches also produced thirst traps unprompted. He said that he'd search things like "car" or "Spider-Man" and that TikTok would "somehow, someway" find a way to show him "a girl shaking butt." His video on the topic received over 10.1 million plays and 852,800 likes in three months (shown below). He is currently the first internet user to relay the phenomenon.

Spread

Later in the month, on July 30th, 2024, Redditor^[2] Usernamewasname posted to /r/TikTok, writing, "Search results are always unrelated," further saying, "I search up the most basic thing and there’s always a thirst trap."

On September 16th, TikToker^[3] @toebahnii posted a video with a caption reading, "Me searching anything on TikTok," and the results being represented by an emoji with a butt, gaining over 1.7 million plays and 254,300 likes in a month (shown below).

On September 27th, TikToker^[4] @str4berryswitchblade posted a video with a text caption reading, "When I search up smth on tt and all the results are just some random shawty shaking ass," gaining over 4.3 million plays and 931,100 likes in three weeks (shown below).

Also on September 27th, 2024, TikToker^[5] @kevinhart112 posted a screenshot of a person's search results where each read one word like "food" or "time." The text caption joked about a friend saying, "I'm not a meat beater" but his search history looked like that, implying that he was finding explicit content with one-word TikTok searches. Over three weeks, the photo received roughly 188,200 likes (shown below).

Non-viral discourse about the phenomenon also surfaced on Twitter / X during the same timeframe. For instance, on October 6th, X^[6] user @theemork tweeted about disliking TikTok's search algorithm, providing a screenshot of male thirst traps instead of female ones (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References