TikTok Users Are Jokingly Preparing to Slime Their Homeboys on February 26

Oh, TikTok. Even people who are regularly on the app are often baffled by the things they're seeing in their feeds. Users across the app are currently talking about Feb. 26, a day that could apparently lead to friends betraying one another for the sake of the meme.

If you're wondering what Feb. 26 is all about, or why so many TikTok users are talking about "sliming their homeboys," we've got you covered. Here's what we know about the trend.

If you've seen the "slime your homeboy" meme taking over TikTok and wondered what it means, it's not as literal as you might have guessed. Nickelodeon famously used to slime celebrities of all stripes, but this is not that kind of sliming. Instead, those on TikTok seem to be taking their cues about what the word slime means from the world of hip-hop, and specifically from a 2024 song called "Slime You Out" by Drake featuring SZA.

That song is all about betraying a friend, and it seems that that's exactly what many people on TikTok are planning to do. What's more, this is a betrayal of the worst kind, as friends are apparently joking about killing the people they know at 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 26. This might seem a little extreme, but you have to remember how far many on TikTok will go for some great content.

The meme suggesting that TikTok users are going to participate in a coordinated mass killing of the people closest to them appears to be a joke, and we sincerely hope that no one goes through with these plans.

Like so much on TikTok, this meme is really just a way to generate content, even as it's also confused plenty of people with its references to a specific date and its use of a phrase that most people have never heard before.

Many of the memes have themselves been quite funny, and usually feature a person realizing that they're out with their friend at the exact time when it means they might get shot down. It's a dark sort of comedy, to be sure, but one that works precisely because it's based on something that most people trust their friends would never actually do.

It's unclear where the Feb. 26 and "slime your homeboy" meme will go once the day passes by. Like most trends on TikTok that are tied to a specific day, though, it seems distinctly possible that the day will be memory-holed like so much else on the platform, and those who were talking about it will move on to something else.

While the meme is intended as a joke, here's hoping that nothing tragic or weird comes out of it. For now, this is just a darkly comic suggestion that you should maybe think about how well you really know your friends.