Tag: pop culture

If you were anywhere within 10 feet of a Wi-Fi connection this week, you may have come across the still image of what appeared to be an unstacked Italian nesting doll of dimples and unconventional shoe choices on the Tonight Show couch of Jimmy Fallon (who was wearing extremely conventional shoes under his desk, I’m sure). What you may or may not have known is that the bodies attached to those shoes belonged to three mega-viral TikTok stars—who are, in fact and importantly, all Italian.

Todd Owyoung/NBC

This image, and the interview that went along with it, ripped through the internet like a Costco pizza cutter. First, there was Fallon’s response to his guests, two of whom were children, which ranged from occasional bemusement to borderline tolerance to complete derision for the antics of the TikTok act he had booked on his show. More importantly, there were the optics: Fallon appeared to be hosting the call sheet for a multi-timeline show about a Batman villain. But the final reveal for the uninitiated, which happened entirely post-airing, was what took this piece of the historical record over the edge of virality: This adult man and the two children next to him … who look like the Animorphs book cover of a very specific Italian male species … were not all related.

The large- and medium-sized gentlemen with the eyes of a husky and the vocal cords of the Cookie Monster and Donald Duck, respectively, are the Costco Guys, a.k.a. AJ Befumo and Big Justice, who are obsessed with two things: bulk shopping and going viral. The littlest one to their left, however, was a little more of a mystery to new audiences. First, there was his vibe: quiet, considering, frequently unsmiling, but seemingly there for a pleasant time. Then there were his shoes: neon green, in constant motion, jutting out horizontally from his body, without so much as a suggestion that they’d ever touch the floor. Because he is a child, you see—even despite immediately establishing himself as a person (a person with the distinct aura of a wise and magical toad, but a person nonetheless) deserving of the utmost respect. He somehow seemed like AJ and Big Justice’s elder and Fallon’s boss. He’s 3 feet tall, 8 years old, and probably learning how to subtract in a third grade classroom as you read this. And his name? Is the Rizzler.

If you knew none of this, then congratulations—your algorithm is built different. If you knew any of this before the Rizzler started proliferating through social media at large following the Fallon segment, then you are probably a straight white man. The Rizzler may not be related to the people he makes viral videos with, but he certainly has cultural cousins: Hawk Tuah, Baby Gronk, Theo Von. These are words and names that could kill a Victorian child, but words that I know nonetheless. You could call the Rizzler the human Moo Deng … and you could also call him the baby from Dinosaurs. But if you think you’ll make it far on the internet without calling him the Rizzler—you are wrong.

Yes, visually and spiritually, he’s like if Grogu knew meatball subs existed, but culturally, the Rizzler’s whole bit—other than eating things with two guys who are, again, not related to him—is that he is a child who demands respect. When Fallon asks him to do “the Rizz face” (more on that later), he obliges, I believe, out of the goodness of his heart, and not because he’s a dancing monkey. He does the big booms with AJ and Big Justice because he supports his friends’ ambitions, not because he’s a clown. He offers up that he likes chocolate-covered raisins when Fallon strangely yells at Big Justice, “THEY’RE GOOD FOR YOU!” after Big Justice—a kid—complains about raisins as a Halloween treat. The Rizzler is the head of families he doesn’t even hail from. The Rizzler is an aura bomb, wrapped up in charisma and comic timing, who looks like a Squishmallow and smells like pastrami, but in a good way.

Or that’s what TikTok would tell you when there aren’t enough reverent words in the English language with which to praise the Rizzler (government name: Christian Joseph). Trying to convey this to a Tonight Show audience who thought they might be seeing Zendaya or Ryan Gosling, or even that young “Brat” woman they’ve been hearing so much about, is a Herculean task that no one at The Tonight Show even attempted. When an internet trend hits the harsh, NBC-studio-scented air of the real world, it’s like seeing a teacher at the mall. Or maybe it’s more like seeing the school mascot at the principal’s desk. Something doesn’t quite feel right, and suddenly everyone is asking questions like “Who got fur in the coffee maker?” and “Why are Jimmy Fallon’s ears bleeding like that?” and “What’s a Rizzler?”

On the latter, at least, I can help. No small being has sparked this much curiosity with so few answers since your mom started asking you what Moo Deng was. And I’m certainly not trying to pit round things against each other—that’s billiards, and this is actually bigger than that. Because nothing produces more questions and anxiety over where we are as a culture than when the lawless, lore-driven celebrities of social media meet the tidy, media-trained couches of late night television. So for those just catching up, allow me to answer your questions about how the Rizzler got there (other than, again, by possibly being a magically materializing toad). Let’s start with the obvious and most frequently asked question about the Costco Guys and the Rizzler …

Why doesn’t the big one simply eat the smaller ones to grow stronger and defeat Jimmy Fallon?

Great question with a not so simple answer: In joining forces, AJ, Big Justice, and the Rizzler have created a viral ecosystem that simply doesn’t work without all of the biotic and abiotic components working in unison. Less scientifically speaking, these three are the holy trinity of BroTok. AJ is God, Big Justice is Jesus Chrst, and the Rizzler is the Holy Spirit that keeps us intrinsically connected to them all.

AJ, love him or tolerate him, has been trying to go viral or get famous—whichever comes first—since Big Justice was in “larval form,” to quote a TikTok comment lost to time. Before he started vlogging about his family on social media, AJ was a semiprofessional wrestler who went by “American Power Child, Eric Justice.” But he was also, like … making parody songs and putting Big Justice in his “backbling” (a Baby Bjorn, goodness, this lore is deep) to go shopping. Until something finally stuck: Costco. In March, AJ and Big Justice went mega-viral (56.7 million views and counting) for their “We’re Costco Guys” video, and eight months later, they have more than 2 million TikTok followers and their very own Beans (which is to say, an unrelated minor who maybe lives with them).

The Rizzler is simply a funny kid who seems to like doing characters and bits. It’s a tale as old as time, but whereas I pretended I was a puppy dog for, like, my entire fourth year of life and nothing happened but my parents getting annoyed, the Rizzler went viral precisely this time last year for fully embodying his Black Panther Halloween costume: “Just because I’m Black Panther doesn’t mean I’m going up a ladder! Mommy said it’s dangerous.” As legend goes, Big Justice saw this video and wanted to meet the Rizzler, so he traveled with AJ to New Jersey—shockingly, the Costco Guys are not from New Jersey, but Boca Raton, Florida—and the rest was history …

But realistically, the degree to which AJ was like, “OK, and what if I just got an even smaller guy” and recruited the Rizzler to start making content like he was related to them—something many fans still don’t even realize—is kind of unreal. AJ knew what women decorating homes have always known: Getting the tinier version of something normal-sized is simply more fun. I like tiny bowls because I can put even tinier things in them. And I like the Rizzler because he’s a tiny Big Justice, who is a tiny AJ, and there’s no verifiable proof that they didn’t find an industrial-sized vat of the Substance at Costco that made this all possible.

But where did the Rizzler get his name? The other day I heard the words “sticking out your gyat for the rizzler” floating from underneath my 13-year-old’s door. Are these two things related?

Sort of. But also, gross!

The easiest way to put it is that “rizz” is Gen Alpha slang for “charisma,” and a rizzler is someone who has it in spades. I’ll explain “gyat” just because we’re here, and so you can get your kid to stop listening to that song (but it will never leave your head again, I’m so sorry, it’s like the video from The Ring, you just have to pass it on now). Gyat stands for “girl your ass thick” and is basically a replacement word for “a woman’s butt,” so to stick out your gyat for the rizzler is to show off your behind to attract a charismatic gentleman …

I don’t want you to talk like this, OK? But you need to know that there are people talking like this, and they are mostly under 5 feet tall, and we need to be able to talk to them! We also need to speak this language to understand that, in a matter of months and with a handful of viral videos, this 8-year-old boy went from being a rizzler to being the Rizzler. According to the lore, the Rizzler’s friends started calling him the name before he even knew what it meant, and he started making the face that’s made him famous—“mewing,” as the kids say, or “Chad face,” as the slightly older kids say—even before that.

If you were paying close enough attention, you may have noticed that on The Tonight Show, the Rizzler taught Fallon and the Roots how to do the eyebrow raise and lip pursing—but not the signature cheek stroke. Some things are simply proprietary.

What we all need to understand is that generational talents used to debut on the Disney Channel with a show about being a tween private investigator who has a medical condition that gives them a wolf’s sense of smell. Now those little talents are on TikTok. The idea that they can all make it to The Tonight Show one way or another is as concerning and alarming (for us) and exciting (for the Rizzler and Chloe Wolfe, PI) as ever before!

But why do people love the Rizzler so much?

It seems to be one part “he’s so cute, I want to eat him like a Haribo gummy,” a dash of “this kid is just innately weird and funny,” and a heavy pour of “this is a child who I see only on social media that I can assign a character to and have a little fun never knowing whether it’s true.”

The cuteness is often rolled out in the Rizzler archives—cute home videos from before he was a mononymous internet personality—and the humor is in the content he makes with the Costco Guys and the extended Costco Universe (more on that later). But the character work is going down in the comments, where Rizzler fans observe a mafia-dom-like energy from this itty-bitty Michelin Man. Any suggestion of an insult is met with an insistence on respect for the Rizzler’s name. Any suggestion that perhaps Costco food taste testing isn’t what children should be doing for their after-school snack is met with a stern “The rizzler doesn’t even eat the double chunk chocolate cookies you fucking moron.” And, in general, something about that Fallon interview: The fact that he was at the right hand of the host, the fact that he sat quietly confident as his colleagues fawned and fretted over their big moment, the fact that it was preceded by starring moments at Knicks and Mets games this month—all of this just kind of made it feel like the Rizzler had moved beyond his corner of the internet and into the mainstream.

And I don’t know what to tell you—the source material is there. I have officially been Rizzler pilled. This third grader simply has the gravitas of Gandolfini or Don Corleone, whether he technically has access to a (toy) horse’s head or not.

On that note, are we sure this is … a child?

Does the Rizzler kind of appear to be an adult wearing shoes on his knees like Gary Oldman in Tiptoes? Yes. But by all accounts, that’s just part of his general aura. It’s not, like, an Andy Milonakis situation. (Although I would be fine with the Rizzler getting his own talk show, maybe even just usurping the Tonight Show gig the next time he’s on. He’s the head of the family now, after all.) There is a strong video trail that shows the Rizzler being an actual baby just a few years ago. Which, it also can’t be overstated that after a summer spent getting wildly internet famous, the Rizzler simply … went to third grade.

Why did it seem like Jimmy Fallon would rather be at a vegan butter-churning festival than play along with the people—two of whom are children—he invited onto his show?

Pretty rich for ol’ James to be annoyed by childlike behavior from two actual children and their kinda-sorta guardian! At various times throughout the interview, Fallon seemed to roll his eyes or attempt to move on from the kind of bombastic, repetitive clownery the Costco Guys intentionally use in their videos—you know, the kinds of things kids like? The internet astutely pointed out that Jimmy should be careful. By disrespecting him, Jimmy was treading awfully close to turning the Rizzler into the Joker.

My pet theory is that Fallon didn’t know, until the second the house lights went down and the stage lights came up, that the Rizzler was a child. Just look at the way he looks to the Rizzler for help when AJ and Big Justice bellow out their 20th Big Boom of the night. Also, Jimmy didn’t help the Rizzler when the kid asked him what to do with the licorice that received only two measly booms, and because he was too polite to put it on Jimmy’s desk, he just had to eat it. That is absolutely no way to treat the Rizzler, a person I learned about four days ago.

Why do they say “BOOM!” like that, though? Is it a sloppy homage to Emeril’s “BAM”?

You know what, maybe? But sometimes virality really is just as simple as rhyming, and someone like AJ knows that. The Costco Guys invented the “Boom or Doom” scale to rate their Costco findings, immediately abandoned ever “dooming” anything, and resorted to rating everything on a five-boom scale. One boom is no good, three booms is solid, and when something is a home run, it gets “Five! Big! Booms!” The booms must be both verbally and physically performed, and they must be loud (sorry, Jimmy Fallon).

The booms are more native to the Costco Guys than the Rizzler, but he does participate when called upon and always backs them up when they’re giving big booms, even when Fallon is sighing down his neck a foot away. He’s magnanimous that way.

Wait, but if AJ isn’t the Rizzler’s dad, who is? Did he spawn from a Costco baby back rib like Adam?

The Rizzler has parents. His dad is especially present on the Rizzler’s own social media pages, filming and sometimes doing skits alongside him and his little brother (yes, they get even smaller). The Rizzler’s dad even has his own moniker within the Costco Universe: Uncle Savasta.

Sorry, did you say the Costco Universe?

I’m suspicious of AJ and where he falls on the scale of “monetizing your children—and also not your children!—to live out your dreams vicariously through them,” but to be honest, I find his laugh while spending time with his child (and not his child!) so genuine that the jury’s still out. Plus, it’s all such a gender bend of the Toddlers & Tiaras mom trope that I’m almost impressed by the subversiveness …

But I’ll hand this to Costco dad every day of the week: He’s incredible at talent acquisition and world-building. Get this guy out of the amateur wrestling ring and into a Marvel studio. Even before AJ and Big Justice acquired the Rizzler, they’d been branding their entire family and adding newcomers to the Costcoverse. There’s Cousin Angelo, who, like Cousin Olver, seems to be a less preferred member of the crew but who also has an admirer in Vita Coco, which is endlessly funny to me; there’s this guy Makeshift Zach, who gets all the exclusive interviews with the family; and regularly appearing in the videos are MBJ, a.k.a. Mother of Big Justice, and the sister Ashley, who simply goes by Ashley, which I personally find iconic.

And of course, the Rizzler debuted in the Costco Universe at the beginning of the summer, rating chocolate chip cookies (pronounced exclusively: DUWBA CHUNK CHOCK-LUT COOOOKIE) with the gang. Every member of the Costco Extended Universe gets their own added verse in the viral song “We Bring the Boom”; there’s a line in the Rizzler remix that is funnier and more astute than anything a band of bloggers could ever conjure: We’re like the three ev-o-lutions of a Pok-e-mon.

Not to start any beef, but at this point, has the Rizzler become bigger than Costco Guys—bigger than any one fictional universe can contain?

Technically speaking, the Rizzler isn’t bigger than most things. You could roll him up in a ball and save him in your pocket for later, like a jawbreaker.

But in terms of power and influence—yeah. He’s the Steve Urkel of bro-y TikTok: a guest character brought in to jazz things up who stole the show so completely that you’re pretty sure the show was called Steve Urkel. But I firmly believe that the Rizzler needs the structure and support of the Costco Universe as much as they need his star power.

Ok, but, is this … bad? Is it bad to enjoy the Rizzler as a sort of funny little internet character who is, in fact, a child who isn’t really in control of his own online presence? Is this going to haunt me? Is this going to become a Baby Gronk situation?

I assume this tricky final question is payback for telling you about sticking out your gyat for the Rizzler, in which case, I do understand, but wow, what a doozy.

I’ll say this: The feeling I have when I look at the Rizzler is the same one I have when I see a Shiba Inu puppy. Can you please just stay like this forever? Can you be cute just like THIS forever, even though I know the future thing you’ll be is just as good???

And for that reason, I would really love for the Rizzler’s parents (and OK, AJ, too) to talk to the Corn Kid’s parents. Remember him? The 7-year-old with a naturally hilarious way of communicating who accidentally got famous on another person’s social media channel? And then he took a few big brand deals, threw a few baseballs, rode on a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and then just … went back to school without us ever even learning his last name? Because his mom didn’t want us to know it! And one day, after that kid has hypothetically finished four years of college paid for by one Chipotle ad and the good personality he had when he was 7, if he still wants to be famous, or work for Big Corn, or make viral TikTok videos—he can! (And listen, even with all that care, internet rumors still went viral saying that he died, which Corn Kid had to clear up on Instagram. Which is exactly why it was a good idea for Corn Kid to go back to being just a kid.)

Fame isn’t linear, and nothing can stay golden forever. Nor can it stay perpetually round and fully detached from the Tonight Show floor. Internet main characters, even the young ones, are like the plucky ingenues of the aughts—we lift them up onto pedestals so high, they can only ever fall from them. And while I feel confident in the Rizzler’s Anne Hathaway–like ability to bounce back, I’d love to see him not have to. I’d love to see the adults around him help him avoid any descent that’s too painful. We’ve learned to respect the Rizzler. Let’s—all of us—keep it that way. Because I certainly don’t wanna find out who gets the horse head first.