This Week Online: Why Is Everyone Beezin’?

It’s a grab-bag of vaguely related trendlets highlighting the divided attention span of young people this week, as we whipsaw from Hogwarts Legacy fallout to a Big Lie told by Mexican restaurant chains, and end at the incredibly weird habit of eating oranges in the shower. Plus, people are out here beezin’. (I didn’t know what that was either.)

Everyone out here beezin’

The hottest (and dumbest) new trend among the young and impressionable this week is called “beezin’”: Some experimental TikTokers report that applying Burt’s Bees lip balm to your eyelids gets you high.

Always up for a cheap thrill, I gave it a shot. I am not high. The peppermint oil provides a slight tingling sensation that has little in common with MDMA.

According to Dr. Olivia Killeen, an ophthalmologist at the University of Michigan, beezin’ is not only ineffective, it’s also potentially dangerous. “Putting substances on the eyelids that weren’t designed for the eyelids can cause irritation, redness, pain, and even chemical burns,” Killeen said. “If they get into our eyes, again, it can cause redness, pain, tearing, swelling, and in really severe situations, it could cause infections or even ulcers that would lead to scarring and vision loss.” What a total beez-kill.

Eating oranges in the shower

Beezin’ is pretty dumb, but have you tried the shower orange? It won’t get you high, but brave pioneers on TikTok and Reddit are extolling the virtues of eating oranges in the shower. According to proponents, eating an orange in the shower “eliminates any worry of making a mess,” and “the heat and humidity exaggerate the taste and smell of the citrus.” It is, according to TikTok, a “well-rounded experience.”

I can’t really argue with any of these points, but it still upsets me in a visceral way. There’s nothing wrong with eating an orange in the show, but it just isn’t right. What’s next? Toilet chilli? Bathtime spaghetti with chocolate? It’s also hard to tell whether it’s a joke or not. The trend began with a post on Reddit from seven years ago that touts eating a shower-orange as “the most carnal, ferocious, liberating thing a man can do,” but is it all an elaborate joke? Why is it just becoming popular now? Showers and oranges have been around for a long time. Man, life is mysterious sometimes.

The fajitas aren’t really sizzling

If you noticed a collective disruption in The Force recently, as if a million young people reached a moment of sudden collective disillusionment, it might be this video on TikTok. In it, sallamibrahim24 reveals a terrible truth about chain restaurant Mexican food. The “sizzling fajitas” aren’t really sizzling. Instead, the cook squeezes liquid (water? oil?) onto the hot skillet to produce the attention-grabbing steam that tells an entire restaurant, “Someone just ordered the fajitas!”

This commenter speaks for everyone too young to realise that everything is fake anyway, when he says, “I feel so betrayed, like nothing is real anymore. Next I suppose your gonna say the Tooth Fairy isn’t real either.” Where this fellow holds out hope: “I’m still going to that spot. The sizziiing plate makes everything just taste good.”

More Hogwarts Legacy drama

Genial, knowledgeable cooking YouTuber Binging with Babish seems like the last person to be at the centre of an internet boycott, but that’s what’s happening this week. The cause of the fallout: controversy over the Hogwarts Legacy video game. A recently posted Babish video gives instructions on cooking a full English Breakfast, surrounded by sponsored ads in which Babish hawks Legacy to his 10 million+ YouTube subscribers. Many online denizens feel that supporting the game is at least tacit approval of Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling’s anti-trans views. Babish’s Instagram is filled with posters vowing to unsubscribe, leaving comments like, “Man, what a way to ruin this show. Laters man. Guess having the privilege of all these followers didn’t make you think how this would affect a lot of them.”

Viral video of the week: Lying to Police After Discovering a Graphic Crime

There’s no shortage of true crime documentarians on YouTube, but That Chapter’s Mike Oh is among the leaders of the game. His latest video, Lying to Police After Discovering a Graphic Crime, details a fascinating case from Florida (of course) featuring a brutal murder, two teenage defendants from opposite sides of the tracks, a daring escape that turned one of them into a folk hero, and more twists and turns than Rainbow Road from Mario Kart 64. It’s one of those stories that leaves you asking, “What even really happened?” and it’s all anchored by Oh’s lighthearted delivery tinged with an Irish lilt. It verges on the darkly comedic, but never falls into insensitivity — just how I like my true crime.