The Feed: Tube girl, #CozyCardio and the #homecoffeeshop movement
In The Feed
This month, The Feed turned 2! As you may know, @thefeed.global is powered by We Are Social’s Cultural Insights team – the driving force behind all culturally relevant, timely and insightful content.
Over the past year, we’ve seen reactive trends from The Barbie movie to #ManRepeller content highlighting women-led narratives, technical innovation bringing our favourite movies to the vertical screen, and Penn Badgley’s TikTok and ‘Bread Guy’, pointing to a need for authentic, wholesome online content. Check out the top 10 liked posts from the past year here, here and here on our Instagram.
And as usual, we’re diving into the top three posts from this month! Trends include TikTokers turning their homes into community coffee shops, a TikTok movement bringing cozy vibes to the fitness world, and of course, Tube girl helping the internet embrace its delulu energy.
Read on to find out what they all mean and why they took over social.
Tube girl is helping the internet embrace its delulu energy
Tube girl is healing the internet’s social anxiety, one TikTok at a time. Sabrina Bahsoon is #tubegirl, a model, creator and a symbol for those that aspire to have her level of confidence. Her viral videos see her on the London Underground (tube) executing some seriously perfect lip syncing, effortless dancing and wind-swept hair. Most notably though, she’s completely unphased by the other tube goers watching her make her content, and has inspired a trend where other internet users worldwide are creating their own carefree tube-girlesque dances in public places. ‘Thank u tube girl for freeing us from the shackles of cringe x’ writes one user, emanating tube girls confidence against a backdrop of the Northern line.
Audiences are seeking authentic figures of confidence that they can learn from and aspire to, and creators like Tube Girl are delivering on that by taking a traditionally awkward situation – dancing in a public place – and unashamedly defying social expectations. This level of confidence and unmatched self-esteem is part of the wider online wave of #delulu (internet for ‘delusional’) and represents a new wave of TikTok girlies who aren’t letting a little bit of judgment stop them from achieving their potential.
Since her first tube TikTok at the start of August, Sabrina has racked up a total of 10M likes on her videos (TikTok, 2023), and has even walked at London Fashion Week with Mac Cosmetics.
Gone are the days when only movie stars and celebs could be aspirational in their unhingedness (looking at you, Julia Fox). Today, brands can look to Tube Girl and other creators who represent real chaotic influence as potential collaborators.
This TikTok movement is bringing cozy vibes to the fitness world
Lights are dimmed, candles are lit, fuzzy socks are on, a comforting movie is on the screen….and your treadmill is turned on. Known as #CozyCardio, this workout trend is sweeping over TikTok thanks to its light, relaxing vibe. The videos encourage viewers to leisurely walk a few miles in the comfort of their own homes, with creator Hope Zuckerbrow writing “exercise doesn’t have to be done in a cold & sterile environment – it can be sensory, friendly and fun.” Other members of the Cozy Cardio movement are echoing back in agreement, with captions like “POV: you decide your annual fall Gilmore Girls rewatch is going to be your ✨Cozy Cardio✨ time.”
There’s a shift in how fitness is being communicated online. Often inaccessible and unattainable, performed by influencers in peak condition, Cozy Cardio represents a move towards depicting fitness in a more relatable way that places leisure, comfort and joy at the forefront of the practice. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, the percentage of Americans who reported doing low-intensity workouts (including yoga, swimming, pilates, walking) increased from 21% in 2018 to 28% in 2023.
Cozy Cardio emphasises the importance of self-care, relaxation, and slowing down. Sports brands – while often focusing on high-intensity workouts, can instead explore ways to support the communities who wish to participate in routines that offer respite.
TikTokers are turning their homes into community coffee shops
It’s old news that user-generated content lets people see ‘behind the scenes’ of a creator’s life. But now, content is going beyond letting people *see* behind the scenes – instead, it’s inviting them to step into the scene itself. Across TikTok, the #homecoffeeshop movement is seeing people open up their homes as informal cafes and community eateries, inviting friends (and curious viewers) to pass the time in a more intimate setting. These ‘cafes’ are carefully designed to create a place where people get in touch with a wider community, with content used to document and spread the word about these shared spaces.
For some time, society’s “third places” – meaning social places that are not a person’s home (first place) or work (second place)– have been in decline. Digital third spaces, like social platforms, are stepping in to fill that gap – but #homecoffee shops show how this is happening in a hybrid way, with IRL space, spread and documented via platforms like TikTok, are creating blended hangout spaces that facilitate modern, online-offline relationship building.
In the last 30 days, the hashtags #homecoffeeshop, #athomecoffeeshop and #inhomecoffeeshop have collectively received more than 10K views. (Tiktok, 2023)
How can brands create content that helps people segue naturally from online communities into offline community-building?
