A harmless and fun Tiktok video which was posted by a 17-year-old boy inviting people to his birthday party had gone viral and caused more than 2,500 people to wreak havoc at Huntington Beach.
Adrian Lopez (@adrian.lopez517 on TikTok) had posted an open invitation to his birthday bash by Huntington Beach's fire pits on Saturday night through a TikTok video, but he did not expect it to become viral as it only had 40 views when he first posted it.
The now-deleted video had started a trending hashtag, #Adrianskickback, which has more than 350 million views as of date. Many other TikTok users, even verified creators, are posting about attending the party.
Some people, wanting to be a part of the trend, drove a few hours, and some even boarded a plane to join the party in person.
The birthday bash, seeing more than 2,500 attendees, soon descended into chaos when they blasted fireworks into a mob in the middle of Pacific Coast Highway, jumped on police cars, scaled palm trees and flagpoles and leapt from the pier into throngs of people below to crowd-surf.
Business owners spent the day after the party cleaning graffiti from their windows and sweeping up broken glass and pepper balls, while a GoFundMe page has been set up to raise funds for artists whose exhibitions were destroyed during the party.
So far, the cause of the mayhem has not been identified, as there wasn't an organized protest effort. It seems to have been just a large group of teens that got out of control.
More than 175 people were arrested when it was over.
Commenting about the party that went out of control, City Councilman Dan Kalmick said, “It goes to the fact that the government isn’t structured to deal with an amorphous entity of folks. This wasn’t like a concert where we could talk to a promoter and issue a permit. When you have folks who don’t have a command or control structure, how does a city or police department manage that? I’m just not sure.”
This incident goes to show how powerful TikTok’s algorithm is, but it is also a sign of pent-up energy of young people desperate for fun and thrill after more than a year of pandemic lockdown.
Karen North, a professor of social media at USC, responding to questions why people would attend a stranger’s party said, “One reason is to simply get out of the house post-pandemic, but the human desire to be part of something big plays a role as well. It’s the same reason people watch space shuttle launches. People want to be a part of that moment. They want to be able to say, ‘I was there when that happened.’”
Reminds me of the time when people would queue up for three hours at an ice-cream store because the store's TikTok video got on their "For You Page".
Credits to The Star for the initial coverage.
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