Want to drink coffee or edible oil? Would you like to injure your puppy or drink alcohol?
These are just a few of the questions that became a virus on a certain horn in Tiktok. This is a video of people asking students at Brigham Young University – asking about the university in Provo, Utah. The video has become a massive niche for the app, accumulating over 17 million views in one post, encouraging appeal from people new to BYU and Mormon culture. USA Today reached out to Latter-day Saints’ Church of Jesus Christ for comment.
The tictalker who makes these videos say they get a wide range of answers from BYU students, but that’s the most shocking thing that tends to go viral.
Comedian Daniel Spencer, with 1.7 million Tiktok followers, says he was filming an interview with Man on the Street at his alma mater, BYU, until the school sent him a ceasefire and a letter of imagination around 2023.
Spencer, who grew up in Mormon but left the church after coming out as gay in 2020, says he believes the video takes on such chords as it shows a culture that many people rarely expose.
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“It’s weird to see what it has to be like to attend BYU being a subculture of this kind on the internet,” says Spencer. “It’s like I felt while attending BYU. There were other friends in college, drinking and partying, we spent the night of the game and went to sleep at 10pm.
Why is the Internet so obsessed with BYU student interviews?
Robert Carpenter is not a Mormon and has never attended BYU, but he began filming interviews there after some of his college high school friends had him visit.
Carpenter says he hasn’t staged his video, but some of the students he interviewed suspect that they are likely to be sarcasm or self-saturated in their reactions.
Like Spencer, Carpenter says he received a suspension and assumed letter from BYU in 2023. He also makes similar videos interviewing students at Liberty University, a private evangelical Christian university in Virginia.
In Carpenter’s view, these types of videos showcase the perspective against the perspectives of many other college students, so they are very grasped by Tiktok. Most students who go viral say they don’t drink alcohol or have sex outside of marriage. Some people avoid curses and coffee.
What you can learn from BYU interviews
Both Spencer and Carpenter say their videos are not intended to diss BYU or its students. They say that most of the students they interviewed were polite and kind. Many were happy to agree to answer questions as a welcome break from studying.
While it makes sense that these videos are interested online, psychotherapist Stephanie Salkis encourages people to notice their attitudes when watching these videos.
“If you’re looking at it to really understand how other people live, that’s not like watching it to ridicule someone,” says Sarkis. “I think we need to keep that in mind. Are we looking at it as if we were interested or how to feel better? What is our intention?”
She added that it is also important that the quick video does not lead to judgments or conclusions about religion or the community as a whole.
“The best way to know about someone’s life experience is to ask them,” she says. “One person doesn’t talk about the entire group.”
The way Spencer sees it, every university has its own culture. In that sense, BYU is the same.
“It’s fun to see another kind of culture, it’s fun to see a fun little gag,” says Spencer. “If you go to campus and dig deeper into their culture, you’ll find something interesting and something worth asking that it will probably be strange for everyone else in America.”
Moreover, not all students interviewed in these videos have the same view. Spencer recalls how one student’s incredible answer actually landed the “ring by spring.”
While seeking the student’s favorite vows, one girl yells at a loud curse, and another BYU student saw it and was impressed by her bravery. “The man slips into her DMS and says, ‘Hey, you look really cold. I saw you swear on that video.” Yes, they dated and married each other. ”
