Recently, our red friend from Sesame Street, Elmo, has taken the world of TikTok by storm. Many popular TikTok creators have been joining the Elmo trend and posting clips of funny things Elmo has said during his time on Sesame Street. 

Many of these videos have gone viral and are creating new trends every day. The main trend consists of people admiring the way Elmo speaks with a New York accent or making compilations of some of their favorite Elmo moments. 

“He’s hilarious,” said freshman Isabel Ball.

Why has Elmo gained so much social media attention 28 years after his television premiere? It all truly started when the TikTok user @cj_vogt posted a video on Monday, Dec. 13, 2021, of Elmo on Sesame Street singing a song that says “a plastic water bottle and a paper towel roll.” The TikTok quickly went viral gaining nearly 6 million views, 745,000 likes, and 113,600 videos posted under the audio. 

Many of the videos under the audio are TikTok users admiring the way Elmo said paper towel roll at the end of the song. More and more videos admiring the way Elmo speaks started popping up on users’ TikTok For You pages.

 “Um, quite a bit like every couple of videos,” said senior Kelsey Mathewson.

Another popular Elmo video was posted on Friday, Dec. 31, 2021, by the user @dollartreeprncehans. The video was a clip from an interview of Elmo on the Jimmy Fallon show where they were cooking meals, the video says “onion, garlic, celery, balsamic vinegar. That’s a big word for Elmo.” The video currently has 16.1 million views, 2.1 million likes, and 181,500 videos posted under the TikTok’s audio. Many of the videos are people using the sound to tell the internet words they can’t correctly pronounce, listing things they like about their significant others, and simply just admiring the way Elmo speaks.

As of Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022, on TikTok, there are 2.3 billion posts under the Elmo hashtag. The TikTok creator, @Livpearsall, has posted 13 videos following the Elmo trend, she gained 32+ million views on these videos making her one of the most popular “Elmotok” creators. “Elmotok” is the name given for the people who find videos about Elmo on their TikTok For You Page.

 “Um, it’s a little cringy but like it’s funny that like we were so like, good with Elmo when were younger and now it’s like coming back and we’re like in high school.” said senior Mia Cheek.

The world of Elmo reaches people you would never expect. The popular TikTok couple, @cost_n_mayor, is a set of married professional dancers who share their skills with their TikTok platform and recently posted a video using the popular “Elmo chugs along like a plane” audio and creating their own dance to it. The video went viral getting 18 million views and 3.1 million likes, the dance turned into a trend of its own within the Elmo trend, making dance TikTok a major part of Elmo TikTok.