For members of the always-online generations, reality is hanging by a very thin thread. Core youth values like authenticity and “keeping it real” are confusing concepts to people raised in an environment where almost nothing can be counted on and anything can be faked. Every viral video could be a stealth advertising campaign. Every breakout band, an industry plant. Whether it’s meat mountains at Arby’s, or vérité video of cheater’s antics, this week we’re looking into all-encompassing scams. But at least you can bank on Scientology speed-runs as legit, and take comfort in the realness of a ball of red hot metal.
What is Rod Wave’s Arby’s Takeover?
Arby’s is a fast food chain known for its roast beef sandwiches. Rod Wave is a 27-year-old rapper known for pioneering “soul trap” music. Rod Wave’s Arby’s Takeover is a fictional event that combines these two things.
Many feel Arby’s food and Rod Wave’s music are similar: They’re both slop, but slop in a specific, maximalist way, so the joke is to create AI-generated flyers advertising the takeover that are as huge and gross as possible. Eventually, the “more, More, MORE” prompts result in AI-generating surrealist visions like the ones below. Is Rod Wave partnering with Arby’s to sell some roast beef or is this grassroots internet comedy? Who can really say?
The Rod Wave/Arby’s thing resulted in renewed interest in “Arby’s Meat Mountain.” Online lore says there is a secret menu item at Arby’s called the “meat mountain.” Ordering this will result in a stack of every meat product available at the restaurant piled up between two slices of bread, a sandwich that pushes the epistemological limits of what a sandwich is.
The meat mountain is real, probably. Back in 2014, in the height of the company’s “we have the meats” advertising blitz, posters of a gigantic sandwich were hung in Arby’s locations to illustrate the variety of meats one could order. It wasn’t intended as an actual menu item, but guests pointed to the poster and said, “one of those, please” and Arby’s said, “… ok, I guess.” (or so the company claims; maybe they were manufacturing a “hidden menu” item because that was a thing then.) Fast-forward to 2026; a new generation has started ordering the meat mountain and is actually getting them. Is this the return of a manufactured meme that sells gross sandwiches? Perhaps. Or not.
Cheating and chopping: What’s up with TikTok’s fake infidelity videos?
While most TikTok creators chase algorithmic attention by walking obvious paths like dancing well or being attractive, there are other, hidden avenues into the graces of the great machine that decides which videos to share, including videos of a woman chopping vegetables while catching her husband cheating.
There are hundreds of videos on the platform that follow this formula, like the one below (and this one and this one).
As you can tell by the terrible acting, these videos are fake, but why are they so similar? They all take place in a kitchen. The woman wears a t-shirt, usually white. She is cutting food. The knife is inadequate. It’s that last detail that gets me. What even is this yellow plastic knife-like thing? This knife is too small. And this one is too big. Sometimes the knife is focused on or mentioned, but usually it’s just there, being wrong for the job.
I can channel my inner film student here and infer that the knife, as a potential instrument of violence, is there to add intensity to a scene of domestic disharmony. As a student of the internet, I can see that the wrong knife is rage-bait, designed to get someone to comment “you’re gonna cut your fingers off, you idiot,” and my inner media studies major sees that these kinds of videos are essentially soap operas for people with 40-second attention spans, but the real question is: Who are these people and why do they all make the same video? This account, for instance, has posted fake cheating videos every day, for nearly a year. Why?
What do you think so far?
I was initially haunted by the idea that behind every closed door, a young couple is trying to please a faceless, pitiless algorithm by enacting just the right scene of marital discord so people online would pay attention to them, but the truth is more mundane and more depressing. These are self-produced commercials, part of an affiliate marketing scheme for something called CheatCatcher that supposedly tracks your spouse’s infidelities with AI. It’s part of the OIIC, the Online Infidelity Industrial Complex, that includes products like Cheaty, Usersearch, Instant Checkmate, and others. But cheating checkers are only a small part of the larger affiliate program universe that includes every kind of product or service you can think of from $50,000 tennis bracelets to $2 plastic dopamine hits from Temu, being fed by every single media source you know and trust, every influencer online, and probably your own family. It’s all a hall of mirrors, baby.
What are Scientology speedruns?
You know what isn’t part of an affiliate program? Running into Scientology buildings and acting the fool. That’s the concept behind the “Scientology speedrun.” It’s probably a crime, and it’s definitely chaos, but it’s organic chaos and crime at least.
Messing with Scientologists has been an online tradition since the ancient days of Anonymous, but TikTokers started taking it to new levels recently, first by posting videos of street encounters with members of the religion, and then by posting videos of themselves running into Scientology buildings to see how far they can get inside the mysterious inner world of the group. The videos look like this:
The trend seems to have caught on enough that on Friday, a group of over 50 people stormed Scientology in Hollywood. This is, as stated previously, is probably illegal, and TikTok tends to pull down videos of crimes committed as viral trends, so accounts are being deleted and videos are disappearing, although some still seem to be up for some reason. Luckily, X doesn’t have these reservations. Obviously people shouldn’t do this, but there’s a kind of youthful energy and hilarity to these videos that’s hard to deny.
Viral video of the week: All hail Power Hot Ball
Some kinds of viral videos are based on simple ideas that require no explanation. So it is with Power Hot Ball, a TikTok account that regularly gets millions of views for videos of a metal ball heated to 1,000c melting through things. Here is the Power Hot Ball taking on corn, various materials, and an iPhone. Weirdly, the nearly molten ball of metal is thwarted by a simple coconut, so it’s not all-powerful. If you are like me, and plan to spend the rest of the week watching these videos, here’s a link to many, many of them.
