Time Warp Waterfall

About

Time Warp Waterfall refers to a type of Time Warp visual effect on TikTok that allows the user to send a continuous ripple through a portion of their screen in a waterfall-like fashion. The effect gained major popularity on the app in January 2021.

Origin

On January 15th, 2021, TikTok enabled Time Warp Waterfall sticker (visual effect) on the app.^[1] The sticker allowed users to send a continuous ripple through a portion of the screen in a waterfall-like fashion (examples shown below).

Spread

On January 15th, 2021, the sticker gained viral popularity on TikTok, with hashtags #cascada^[2] and #водопадчеллендж^[3] gaining viral popularity among Spanish-speaking and Russian-speaking TikTok users, respectively. The latter hashtag was suggested automatically for Russian users using the visual effect.

On January 15th, TikTok users @iamthechaim and @valeev_artur posted two of the earliest viral memes within the trend, gaining over 1.8 million views 557,000 views in one week, respectively (shown below, left and right).

In many clips, users utilized the effect to perform a "dance" with their eyes (example shown below, left), or to elongate their neck to make it appear as if their head is floating (shown below, right).

As of January 20th, over 43.5 million videos were submitted under the #водопадчеллендж hashtag.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References