Xiao Ling

About

Xiao Ling is a fictional character that became the subject of multiple TikToks in June 2022 in which people made up narratives about the character. The TikToks are characterized by introducing the main character in their video as "Xiao Ling" before intentionally mischaracterizing their actions in the video using the site's text-to-speech function. These are made in parody of a series of "movie recap" videos on the app, which usually show lesser-known movies and exaggerate their plots over a series of the film's clips, usually in poor English.

Origin

On June 10th, 2022, TikToker @i_like_movies__^[1] posted a video using the 3D Saul Goodman meme captioned, "Imagine if someone named Xiao Ling actually had their whole life narrated with this song in the background." The song used was dubbed by @i_like_movies__ as the "NPC Ahh song." The video gained over 90,000 likes in three weeks (shown below).

The video appears to be a parody of a genre of videos on TikTok in which non-English speakers summarize the plots of lesser-known films, using confusing English to detail the events (example shown below). In the comments of the @i_like_movies__ TikTok, users noted that names like "Xiao Ling" and "Xiao Mei" were frequently used in such videos.

Spread

In response to the @i_like_movies__ video, multiple TikTokers began to parody the "movie recap" trend on TikTok. These often showed clips from well-known films but humorously changed the central character's name to "Xiao Ling" and purposefully misrepresented the actions in the clip. For example, on June 12th, 2022, user @xiao_movies posted a clip from the Star Wars prequels, gaining over 106,000 likes in three weeks (shown below, left). The same day, user @chairgaming22 posted a parody using clips from Breaking Bad, gaining over 360,000 likes in a similar timeframe.

Eventually, "Xiao Ling" parodies became a prominent vehicle for posting clips from the video game Fall Guys, as TikTokers dubbed their character "Xiao Ling" and described the events of a typical Fall Guys game as if they were dire, life-or-death situations. For example, on June 25th, user @kxqvu.fn posted a Xiao Ling Fall Guys parody, gaining over 440,000 likes in five days (shown below, left). On June 27th, user @epicswagcoolawesome posted a similar video, gaining over 457,000 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References