An imaginary currency has been addicting Tiktok users for a few days: dabloons. Starting from a simple meme, the trend took over the entire social network, which made it a role-playing game, mounted an entire economy, and created an inflationary crisis in just a few days.
” Welcome traveler, you look tired. Come and rest by the fire, and drink a good tea. You have well deserved 10 dabloons for your trouble “. It’s a phrase you’ve probably heard if you’re on Tiktok. If the app is foreign to you, on the other hand, there is little chance that you will have understood what you have just read.
Dabloons are units of a virtual currency, originally from an old internet meme. Recently found by Tiktok users at the end of 2022, the meme has been hijacked, and has become an impressive phenomenon, becoming a gigantic community role-playing game, forming a real economy, and finally being plagued by inflation. . Here’s everything you need to know about dabloons.
The origins of dabloons
It all starts, as often on the Internet, with an image of a cat. According to KnowYourMeme, it appears for the first time in April 2021 on Instagram, and we can see a black cat proudly showing its paw, its 4 small pads clearly visible and separated. A text accompanies the image: 4 donuts “. It is from this image that comes the (rather free) definition of the dabloon: it is the fingers of cats, and it can also be used as a currency.
According Spotters mediathe term ” dabloons » would come from an old Spanish currency, the « duplicate », itself coming from the French word doublon. ” This currency was used in particular by pirates and it inspired the creation of the louis d’or in France “says Spotters. We don’t really know how we went from doubloon to dabloon, but that’s not really the question.
The “4 dabloons” meme lives its first life rather quietly on Instagram, without becoming too popular. The transfer to Tiktok, which is made in June 2021, is also not very conclusive at first: the first video where dabloons appear, in which we see the meme at the top of the screen while a person digs sand, did not meet with great success.
success and inflation
Dabloons more or less fell into oblivion until October 2022, when the first Tiktok with the current form of the meme was published by a certain workbysweezy, according to KnowYourMeme. The video, which uses the app’s slideshow function, invites viewers to buy a hamburger for the modest sum of 4 dabloons. The video isn’t a huge hit, but the meme was born.
Very quickly, other users took over the format, and a storytelling quickly appears: as a viewer of the video, you are a traveler, you are tired, a cat comes to talk to you, and he can offer you a bowl of soup or another service for only a few dabloons, the official currency of the trends.
However, there remains an important question: how to get dabloons in the first place? There is no dabloon distributor, but Internet users find a solution: they now make videos where, instead of paying, they offer dabloons to poor tired travellers. A whole economy was born, and the role-playing game became even more serious: the Tiktokeur kept books of accounts of the dabloons they had won, trap videos are created, in which thieves steal our dabloons, others offer to buy watchdog and insurance to protect his property, etc. The examples are many.
As the trend grows in popularity, another problem appears: everyone starts giving dabloons, and sometimes in very (too) large quantities. As a result, the currency rate experienced very high inflation in a few days: while a burger generally cost no more than 4 dabloons, the price quickly rose to ten or even twenty dabloons. The price increase is unsustainable, and soon, users are proposing measures ” counter-inflationists » very serious, like the limit of donations to 100 dabloons.
Despite the inflation, the game still continues and it is among the most popular trends on the platform. Above all, and this is exceptional enough to be noted, the trends Tiktok tend to die out as quickly as they arrive, and they rarely last more than two days.
Dabloons, with their almost week-long longevity, are an anomaly — especially since the trend doesn’t seem to be losing popularity: anti-government groups plan to rebel against economic measures against inflation. So, before you go, feel free to grab some dabloons below.