The latest TikTok trend has streamers behaving like NPCs -.

A new TikTok trend sees creators going live and repeating phrases and gestures over and over while viewers send emojis through the stream. Because these emojis cost about a penny to send, they can be spammed and cause “NPC reactions” from the streamer.

The user who kicked off this viral trend, pinkydoll, found herself all over Twitter when viewers saw her cooking popcorn with a straightener while saying random phrases like ‘ice cream so good’.

Crazy enough, right? But if we dive a little deeper, it seems that this is actually part of some kind of control kink. As Dexerto reports, those with the fetish are now sending hundreds of dollars to these streamers. I’m not surprised that the latest fixation of the Internet is something strange and nasty, but this has certainly reminded me that even with years of chronic online activity, there are still strange and unfamiliar spaces of the Internet that I dare not enter.