It
started with a picture of a cat’s paw. It became a game of wins and losses, a warped
mirror of capitalist reality and, importantly, a giant inside joke.
اضافة اعلان
In case you have not heard: There is a rapidly
growing trend where people on
TikTok are spending, collecting, gaining, and
losing a form of fictional money known as “dabloons” (not to be confused with
the former Spanish gold coin). The hashtag #dabloons, marking dabloon-centered
videos, has over 417 million views on the platform. By Thursday morning, the
number had increased by over 150 million views in 24 hours, and continued to grow.
The game goes
like this: A user scrolls along on their For You page to see if they happen
upon one of the multitude of “DabloonTok” videos. Many of these videos imagine
the viewer as a weary traveler across the internet, the hero in an epic
scrolling odyssey. They invite you in for a meal or a bit of cozy rest, and
feature a cat that then charges you or generously gifts you dabloons.
Alexis Bishop,
an actor who lives in
Orlando, Florida, keeps track of her 174 dabloons on a
whiteboard in her office. “Basically, it’s just an imaginary economy that runs
off the honors system,” Bishop, 26, said in a phone interview.
How are cats involved?
Cats — and specifically their paws or “toe beans” — are arguably the
foundation of the dabloon “economy.” On Tuesday, meme database Know Your Meme
published a history of the dabloon, suggesting that it has roots in posts from
a cat meme Instagram page in the spring of 2021.
In one picture
posted on the account, a single cat paw is outstretched almost like a human
hand, separated into four distinct toes, with a caption that simply says: “4
dabloons.” One dabloon per cat toe. One user on a Reddit post suggests that the
naming convention comes from the shape of cat toes’ similarity to coins, but
another suggests the cat paw is meant to be understood merely as demonstrating
the amount of money owed in a transaction, as if the cat is meant to be the
seller. (You be the judge.)
The same
Instagram account also posted a blurry image of a black cat, which looks to be
in motion, with its paw splayed out like a four-pronged talon. This black cat
reappears in many of the dabloon posts across different platforms, like a
mascot for the game. The exact origin of the cat photos remains unclear, but
they’ve become the furry canon at the heart of dabloon lore.
What are the rules,
and what does this all mean?
It seems the only rule of the dabloon world is that everyone agrees to
play along. In the span of days, the game has taken on layers, morphing into an
intricate web that mimics real life economic consequences and capitalist
practices, although the looseness of the dabloon economy’s money supply would
horrify non-feline central bankers.
When people
began to make videos offering viewers large sums of free dabloons, the
community faced “inflation.” Some people have been robbed by dabloon thieves
and pirates. Other users have set up shop, selling wares such as stews,
crystals and cottages, offering dabloon insurance or bank accounts and adopting
user names like “Dabloon University.” Several users announced their campaigns
for “dabloon president,” and at least one account indicated the community would
hold an election.
Although the
dabloon has yet to buy anyone a real bowl of stew — which would, intriguingly,
set a reference rate for the value of the fake currency versus a real one like
the dollar — it has demonstrated TikTok users’ serious commitment to the bit
(and to having some fun online). It may have started as a niche and obscure
trend, but it’s moved somewhat into the mainstream.
The singer and
influencer Loren Gray, who has 54.5 million followers on TikTok and was once
the most-followed person on the app, posted a TikTok video on Wednesday
afternoon in which she appeared with a solemn face and said, “I don’t know how
many dabloons I have anymore. Every other TikTok I see, ‘Here’s a dabloon
checkpoint, here’s 100 dabloons. Oh no, the dabloon economy is crashing.’”
She went on to
say that offline, her friends did noy understand what she meant when she told
them about the happenings on Dabloon TikTok. She captioned the video: “The
dabloon IRS is at my door and no one understands.”
But even as the
dabloon economy gets increasingly complex, Bishop offered a clue to its
popularity among the TikTok crowd. She said its collaborative silliness is a
relief compared to the high stakes of the real one.
“People really like the
idea of being able to influence this little micro economy,” she said. “It feels
like they’re able to be a part of it in a way that’s way less stressful than
real money.”
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