TikTok's "Suspect" Trend Is a Hilarious Way to Roast Your Friends and Family

Sometimes you just need to roast your friends — and what better way to do so than a hilarious TikTok trend where you can both get your jokes in? The app's new "suspect" trend is the perfect outlet, letting you poke fun at pals, co-workers, family, and even your kids!

If you've seen the trend on your For You Page, and we're guessing you have, then you may have been a bit confused. After all, it's not entirely clear at first what's going on in the videos, or where the trends came from. But fear not — we're here to explain it to you and teach you how to film your own version.

It's actually really simple!

The "suspect" TikTok trend, which is also sometimes called the "suspect challenge," comes to life when you have a friend, family member, or anyone else with you that's down to trade a few roasts back and forth. Oh, and engage in a bit of running.

The idea behind the challenge comes from police foot chases, during which the cop might get on their walkie-talkie and call out an identifying trait of the suspect in order to help their backup. Think, "suspect is in his thirties with short, brown hair." However, the trend takes that concept and turns it on its head, using jokes and jabs as the identifiers.

In a similar fashion to the "passing the phone" trend, the fun part is that though the other person is participating — in this case, running away from the camera person like a police suspect — they have no idea what you're going to say about them.

And their reactions are half the fun!

In one video of a woman and her nephew, she roasts him by saying, "Suspect's phone only works on WiFi," suggesting that he's too broke to pay for a phone plan. He then gets her back by saying, "Suspect tends to post a lot of TikToks but almost never goes viral."

Another video of the trend, featuring a woman and her baby, has gone viral for its cuteness. While her toddler runs around giggling, likely having no idea what his mom is saying to him, she roasts him by shouting, "Suspect learned to sleep in his crib at 13 months old," and "Suspect poops five times a day."

Others are roasting their dads, their co-workers, their grandmas, and even their dogs. If you've got some clever roasts stewing in your brain, this trend may be your time to shine.

The videos are mostly lighthearted, though, and the goal is to make the other person laugh rather than genuinely upsetting them. So if you have some serious gripes with your roommate and their penchant for leaving dirty dishes in the sink, it's probably better to sit down talk to them about it before grabbing your camera for a "suspect" video. Or don't — we kinda want to see it.