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Jacob Shamsian
- TikTok users are yelling the phrase "hit or miss" in public.
- It acts as a sort of secret handshake: If there's another TikTok user around, they're supposed to respond with "I guess they never miss, huh?"
- The lyrics come from a diss track from the Atlanta-based hip hop group iLOVEFRiDAY, responding to a fake tweet from the former adult film actress Mia Khalifa, according to a Twitter thread from comedian and web developer Reed Kavner.
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If you've heard someone randomly yell out the phrase "hit or miss" in public lately, you can blame TikTok.
The social media platform, which specializes in sharing short-form lip-syncing videos, has inspired an IRL challenge, where people yell the phrase and wait for a response.
The origins of the meme, as the comedian and web developer Reed Kavner wrote on Twitter, come from an otherwise obscure diss track released by the Atlanta-based hip-hop group "iLOVEFRiDAY." But the verse from the song, released earlier this year, has invaded the real-life world and led to a spike in Google searches for the phrase "hit or miss."
—Reed Kavner (@reedkavner) December 18, 2018
iLOVEFRiDAY's song, "Mia Khalifa," is a song attacking the Lebanese-American internet personality and former adult film star of the same name. It's a response to a fake tweet where Khalifa calls out iLOVEFRiDAY member Smoke Hijabi — who is Pakistani — for smoking while wearing a hijab. Khalifa herself has made adult film videos where she wears a hijab while having sex.
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But iLOVEFRiDAY apparently thought the tweet was real, and released a retaliatory diss track.
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The song, posted to YouTube in March, went viral in certain corners of the internet, and now has more than 36 million views on YouTube.
The first major TikTok video that picked up on "Mia Khalifa," according to Kavner, was posted by a TikTok user who goes by @nyannyancosplay, who now has more than 280,000 followers.
She picked up one some of catchiest lyrics from the song: "Hit or miss/I guess they never miss, huh?/You got a boyfriend, I bet he doesn't kiss ya/He gon' find another girl and he won't miss ya/He gon' skrrt and hit the dab like Wiz Khalifa."
Her TikTok spawned thousands of similar videos. There are nearly 274 million videos with the "#hitormiss" hashtag TikTok.
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Read more: 16 celebrities who went viral and dominated the internet this year
It became so popular that the lyrics became a calling card for other TikTok users. One user, Thomas Ridgewell, fro Boise, Idaho, decided to see if it could be seen as a "secret handshake" for the community, according to Kavner. He went to a Marshall's and yelled out "hit or miss." Someone responded with "I guess I'll never miss ya."
The other guy got the lyrics wrong, but the video was still popular enough to spawn the #hitormiss challenge. There are tens of millions of videos with that tag, where people go to public places, yell out "hit or miss," and see if anyone responds with the song's next verse.
Khalifa said she "stepped away" as an adult film actress in 2015 after reportedly receiving death threats from ISIS and now works as a social media personality, webcam model, and sports commentator. As for iLOVEFRiDAY, they've continued to make new music, sometimes collaborating with other viral stars. In May, they released a song with the influencer Woah Vicky.
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