About

'Wildest Dreams' Childhood Crush TikToks refers to a series of TikToks set to "Wildest Dreams" by Taylor Swift in which users recreate the first time they saw their celebrity or fictional character crush on screen as a child.

Origin

On September 10th, 2021, TikTok user @squisheddonuts posted a video of herself watching George of the Jungle, with the camera zooming in on her face after a scene in which Brendan Fraser looks sexy. The clip gained over 3.1 million views (shown below).

Spread

User @squisheddonuts continued making similar videos with other Brendan Fraser clips over the following several days, causing other users to follow suit. On September 16th, 2021, user @itsamaizeing posted an example featuring Anakin Skywalker, gaining over 7,000 likes (shown below, left). On September 17th, user @kell.mel posted a version featuring Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, gaining over 75,000 likes (shown below, right).

On September 17th, 2021, Taylor Swift released an "updated version of her song "Wildest Dreams"":https://news.knowyourmeme.com/news/taylor-swift-releases-new-recording-of-wildest-dreams-after-it-trends-on-tiktok after noticing it trended on TikTok with the "slow zoom" function of the platform. That day, she posted a TikTok using the updated version of the track, gaining over 5.9 million likes in four days (shown below, left). Her post inspired others to join the "childhood crush slow zoom" trend with her version of the track. For example, on September 20th, user @saldonnelly posted a version with Bend It Like Beckham, gaining over 52,000 likes (shown below, right). The meme was covered by Junkee.^[1]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References