One million beers is a TikTok meme that began with a joke about an open bar that cascaded into a running gag. The meme consists of people either asking for literally one million beers, or asking for something else and being misheard, only to end up with a million glasses of the frothy drink.
TikTokers derived the joke from a TikTok video from early June 2024, but it didn’t take off until July.
One million beer meme videos typically show one or more young men, often using the “handsome” Snapchat filter for that uncanny valley look, either ordering or providing the title gag from a bar.
Sometimes this looks like a man wandering around a party with a drink under a caption that says he wants one million beers. In other versions, the guys will ask for a normal drink, usually a vodka and Red Bull, and the bartender (under the handsome filter) will mishear this as “one million beers” and begin stacking cans and bottles onto the bar or table.
Users typically set their videos to the song "Sladko" by the Russian pop girl group Serebro, playing an instrumental clip from the track that is sometimes slowed down for longer entries.
The TikTok meme started with user @zackenyon, who posted the first video using the phrase on June 8, 2024. The footage shows him with the handsome filter over his face and in a suit at what appears to be a wedding venue. He holds up a can of some beverage a couple times as he swings the camera around to show the setting.
@zackenyon I love beer
♬ original sound - user45678615182
The caption reads: “Open bar you say? Yea I’ll have 1 million beers.”
This became the user’s most popular video by far out of only five he currently has on his account, reaching 3.4 million views in about a month.
In early July 2024, people began to turn this gag into a full meme on TikTok. It began with videos similar to the original before some flipped the script to ask a bartender for a single drink, only for him to mishear the order as “one million beers” and start piling comical amounts of beer onto the table.
A clear format soon emerged involving the Snapcat filter. By the second week of July, TikTokers were making videos of themselves or others asking for water, food, or anything else with their normal faces and using the handsome filter when they accept the offer of one million beers instead.
One man even offered his baby this option rather than the milk that was asked of him.
The simple comedy of the meme spread easily to other social media sites, including Twitter and Reddit, mostly with screenshots from media and other meme images. Some mentions of the one million beers meme are simply comments on how the phrase has taken over the TikTok For You page.
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