SINGAPORE — If you remember Instagram's World Record Egg, then meet its successor: The chocolate strawberries. 

A 15-second video of a bowl of chocolate-covered strawberries is well on its way to breaking into the most-liked TikTok videos of all time and has spawned countless videos by other users referencing and imitating it. Some content creators are trying to explain why it is getting so much attention.

On Feb 6, TikTok user "Gabs" or "pr4yforgabs" posted the video that was set to the tune of Bobby Caldwell's What You Won't Do For Love. The wide-angle video, filmed with the flash on, alternates between close-up and long shots in time with the music as it pans across the bowl (though people with motion sickness may not take to it all that well).

As of Monday (Feb 26) afternoon, the video has had 249 million views, 34.4 million likes and 389,100 comments. 

TikTok sleuths have congregated in the comments section of the original video and related videos to track its explosive growth as compared to the top-liked videos on the platform.

Right now, the crown is still held by Filipino-American social media personality Bella Poarch (born Denarie Bautista Taylor) with 64 million likes on an August 2020 video of her lip syncing to Millie B's M to the B. This is followed by:

• "Guy dancing in mirror" (Jan 2022): User "jamie32bsh" dancing to a remix of Nelly Furtado's Say It Right while filming himself in a bathroom mirror — 52.5 million
• "River Flows in You girl" (Oct 2023): An eight-year-old violinist surprising TikTok piano busker "vantoan___" with an impromptu duet of the popular Yiruma song — 51.9 million
• "Sugar Crash guy" (Feb 2021): Content creator Nick Luciano lip syncing to SugarCrash! by EllyOtto — 51.5 million

Faced with these giants, it seems TikTok's latest golden child still has a long way to go. Yet, Mexican TikToker "DJ Lost One" pointed out that it has already broken a world record for being "the fastest growing video and trend in TikTok history".

Based on media reports from September 2020, Poarch's video took about four weeks to surpass the then-champion, an elevator dancing video by influencer Michael Le ("justmaiko") with 25.5 million views at the time.

With this in mind, the chocolate strawberries' 34.3 million views in a mere three weeks is an impressive feat indeed.

So why has such a simple video gone viral? Content creator "King Asante" offered up some insight in his own video, saying that it is the video's "anti-creator and industry" quality — the antithesis to curated, high-production videos from celebrities and influencers — that has made it so attractive to social media users.

Similarly, creator consultant "Sammi" said that the video "feels completely different from what you're probably seeing on your For You page".

Both creators agreed that the video's content is also relatable since it is the month of Valentine's Day and chocolate-covered strawberries are commonly associated with it.

"There's a sort of click in our brain that reminds us, 'Oh, yeah, these two things go really good together right now'," Sammi explained.

Another reason for the video's popularity is "TikTok's love of being a part of an inside joke", she added. Once a video starts getting popular on the platform, users and content creators flock to interact with it so that they remain in the know of what is trending in the community.

American YouTuber and TikToker Brandon Conner even encouraged this in his own video on the trend, telling his followers: "If you watching this video would like to take part in TikTok history... you can go onto the video and like it. And who knows, we all may just come together and dethrone Bella Poarch's M to the B video."

The trend has also shot Caldwell's 1978 classic to the top of the TikTok Billboard Top 50, the music publication confirmed on Feb 24. And it seems that this has even spilled over to other platforms, because the latest Billboard chart tracking week also saw What You Won't Do for Love lift 8 per cent in on-demand official streams in the United States.

Although TikTok user "Gabs" was not the first to pick up on the song, she certainly has been the most prominent. Since her viral video, tons of videos filmed in a similar style and format have flooded the short-video platform, often used to highlight loved food or pets.

Even K-pop band Tomorrow x Together has jumped on the trend. A video of it group member Taehyun crouched on a couch, posted by their official TikTok account last Thursday, employs the same style of varying camera angles on a flash video set to the Caldwell song.

"Let me introduce my cat," the Japanese caption on the video reads. It was posted on Japan's National Cat Day. In a follow-up video, it was revealed that fellow member Beomgyu was filming him.

Though "Gabs" has not made a public statement about the original video on her TikTok account, she has posted a couple of similar food videos featuring pancakes and frozen fruit as well as a tutorial video for the chocolate-covered strawberries — which, for the curious, used Milka chocolate.

Related phrases such as "chocolate covered strawberries original", "Gabs the strawberry chocolate video", "original strawberry chocolate video" and simply "Gabs" are also trending on the platform as users tried to understand its virality.

Whatever the reason, King Asante put it best: "The bowl of strawberries just looks so good."