TikTok’s ‘Suspect Challenge’ meme, explained

TikTok is suddenly full of videos of the ‘Suspect Challenge’, in which couples and friends roast each other while running and mockingly describe their chosen ‘suspect’ in the style of a police broadcast.

But where does the new TikTok trend come from and how is it evolving?

TikTok’s ‘suspicious challenge’ explained

The “Suspect Challenge” emerged in October, when TikTokers described each other in the style of a police officer describing a fleeing suspect.

The meme’s format is a bit of a mystery – perhaps it can be attributed to the popularity of true crime podcasts, or the plethora of police bodycam footage being posted online, a case of content merging into the digital melting pot.

TikTokers take turns being the fleeing suspect and the brutal cop, trading insults and trying to get under each other’s skin, with some getting quite personal but most keeping it light-hearted.

Near friendssiblings and couples have taken part in the challenge, and the best videos show the ‘suspect’ receiving a devastating, unexpected insult.

Popular creators took up the challenge, and even celebrities like Emily Ratajkowski joined on the TikTok trend.

As the challenge spread, the videos became increasingly wholesome, with many TikTokers mixing insults with flattering descriptions; It seems that some people can’t resist complimenting their significant other.

The best videos, however, have a bit of spice to them, with suspects literally stopped by the power of a devastating truth.

Where does TikTok’s ‘suspicious challenge’ come from?

The trend appears to be a spinoff of a 2023 meme known as “We’re like “We’re police officers, of course we wear Oakleys.”

The meme ‘We are X, of course we Y’ quickly splintered and spawned many subgenres, leading to a discourse about ‘DINKS‘, which stands for ‘double income, no children’. The subsequent explosion of self-descriptive videos on TikTok quickly led to the “Suspect Challenge,” although the meme’s exact origins are somewhat murky.

Know your meme attributes the initial posts that first shaped the ‘Suspicious Challenge’ to since-deleted videos created by TikToker Lauren Case, whose video was reposted by other users.

Since then, the video-sharing app’s ‘Suspect Challenge’ has flourished; the running seems to be a crucial part of the trend, as it provokes a good reaction from ‘suspects’, who either get out of breath laughing, feign offence, or are genuinely offended and stop running.

Sometimes the officer even jokes about the suspect’s inability to sprint and calls him out for being out of shape.

Like traditional roasting, the “Suspect Challenge” is a free pass of sorts, a light-hearted way for TikTokers to make fun of their friends and family and say things on camera that they wouldn’t normally get away with.

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