On July 15, a 22-year-old student in Nottingham posted a joke on X naming a wave of amateur British rap videos flooding TikTok "UK Poo." Two weeks and sixteen million views later, VICE had published a seven-rule field guide and the artists mocked into virality were booking a joint show — whether Britain was laughing with itself or at its poorest corners remains, for now, an open question.
This is one page of the INCODER observer report. Filing this time is Observer 127, who tends to watch how internet vernacular travels — from a small circle's inside joke to something the trade press has to write a field guide to explain — and whether a group's own awareness that they're "in on the joke" actually protects them from it.
Today's record starts with a joke posted on X: "UK Poo." In mid-July, a Nottingham student sorted a wave of amateur rap videos circulating on TikTok into a new "genre" — cheap handheld camera work, off-key Auto-Tune, a park bench or corner shop for a backdrop. Within two weeks the post had passed sixteen million views, and both VICE and Dazed had published pieces trying to define it.
If a group of people finally gets seen by being mocked, and then chooses to join in on the laughter itself — this record wants to sit inside the moment before that "choosing to join" gets fully settled.
On July 15, X user Cashyams (handle self-styled "##PUNKSUPREME") posted: "There's a genre of music growing on TikTok that I like to call UK Poo," attaching a still from an amateur rap video. Over the following two weeks the post passed sixteen million views, turning "UK Poo" from a private joke between roommates into a cultural phenomenon the trade press felt obliged to explain.
Cashyams is a 22-year-old student in Nottingham who also makes music under the British underground group "SG!". He told a VICE reporter the term started when he and his housemates kept reloading a handful of videos that were "funny to the point where there's no way the person that's making this isn't aware that this is hilarious" — clips like Michelin Lz's "Lately," D Rebal's "Belfast," Ak CMG's "Shake Your Bum." On July 27, VICE published a "UK Poo field guide," codifying the self-generated genre into seven rules: absurdity, a certain naivety mixed with careerist ambition, off-key Auto-Tune, mandatory vertical-phone footage, and a "British decay aesthetic" — park benches, corner shops, slang strange enough to require a Google search. That same week, Dazed and the alt-culture newsletter Thred each published their own takes; meanwhile the rap collective D-Block Europe, nominated as "founding fathers," and influencer KSI, called a "pioneer," had not, as of this filing, formally responded to either title.
The nine quotes below span four distinct positions: the term's coiner, Cashyams, in his original X post and two press interviews; other X users' improvised replies and nominations; and one alt-culture editor's unsparing criticism.
There's a genre of music growing on TikTok that I like to call UK Poo
We are a pretty funny nation in general and it shows in everything we do.
Everyone's heard shit music but there's something about these songs, it feels kind of harsh to just say they're shit. Like, you can see the childlike wonder in the artist's eyes. There's something silly about it and that's why we thought poo was more apt than just shit.
UK poo is a pretty good summary of the country today because there's a lot of nonsense coming out of the UK and if you don't laugh you'll cry.
Twitter is so divided right now, but UK poo has brought people together across the country. Regardless of race, gender, political affiliations, everyone can laugh at these videos.
There's definitely classist and racial undertones to the joke. But, because I made the joke as a fairly lower-class Black person, I think it's different. It's self-deprecating humour. Still, I see some people laughing at the joke in a way that needs to be unpacked. Like, how are you laughing at this in the same way that I am?
'UK Poo' is taking over TikTok. Old UK rap clips are going viral again as users roast the flows, the visuals and everything in between. Harmless nostalgia or disrespect?
20 nugs is actual poverty imagine getting slimed out for a draw
This week in particular has made trawling the For You page as joyless an endeavour as I can recall in the last decade. Some of the younger ones clearly need telling not to quit their day jobs, but that doesn't mean I need to be seeing them all over my timeline.
Background note: these nine quotes sit in roughly four different positions. Cashyams himself keeps insisting this is self-deprecating humor, defending it on the grounds that "regardless of race, gender, political affiliations, everyone can laugh" — but he also admits the joke carries "definitely classist and racial undertones," and concedes that what counts as "laughing the same way I am" is itself blurry. GRM Daily's post sets "harmless nostalgia" against "disrespect" as an open question, without resolving it. Jamie Watts's criticism is the least forgiving voice in the set — he says the week's scrolling left him flatly "joyless."
With no government or corporate body attached to this event, the closest thing to an "official" position is VICE's July 27 field guide, which codifies the joke-born genre into seven clean rules: absurdity, naivety mixed with careerist ambition, off-key Auto-Tune, mandatory vertical-phone footage, and a "British decay aesthetic." The framework takes a loose, ambiguous internet joke and turns it into a citable, arguable "spec sheet" — one that also retroactively crowned D-Block Europe and KSI as "founding fathers" and "pioneers," without either ever weighing in on the title.
For Cashyams, this is a positive thing. He told VICE that "Twitter is so divided right now, but UK poo has brought people together across the country. Regardless of race, gender, political affiliations, everyone can laugh at these videos." He also stresses the "naivety" of it — every stumble these amateur musicians make happens in public, directly in front of the camera, and that exposed vulnerability, in his telling, earns some tenderness.
The mocked amateurs haven't disappeared or pushed back — they've leaned in. Savvy, who keeps posting new clips of "Come Slap Me Again," is described by Cashyams as "always happy to be out and about performing the same bars in some public space or other." According to VICE, the three acts nominated — Slap Me Again, Shake It, and Rich Life/Broke Life — are planning a joint show. Cashyams traces this path back to PinkPantheress's pandemic-era breakout, treating visibility itself as music's real entry ticket, regardless of whether that visibility first arrived dressed as ridicule.
Thred editor Jamie Watts offers the least forgiving read. He describes his week of scrolling as flatly "joyless," and says plainly that some of the younger participants "clearly need telling not to quit their day jobs." In his framing, "the whole country laughing together" papers over a more direct dynamic: a group of amateurs with no resources to control their own image is being mocked at scale and in public, and the entire arrangement only works because the people doing the laughing never have to pay any cost for it.
A batch of amateur rap videos that used to circulate only within their own creators' follower circles got reclassified and renamed by a single joke post, moving within two weeks from a dead zone of TikTok's algorithm straight into VICE's and Dazed's newsrooms.
Almost everyone seems to recognize some corner of their own life in these videos — a park bench, a corner shop, slang strange enough to need a Google search — and that instant sense of recognition is itself what spreads.
The line between "amateur" and "in on it" is getting blurred by these videos — nobody can say for certain whether the person on camera genuinely believes in the music, or already knew exactly how funny it was and chose to lean into the bit anyway.
From Savvy repeatedly performing the same bar in public, to three acts booking a joint show, a clear desire surfaces: to convert this moment of being seen — whatever its origin — into something that can actually last.
The steps that used to sit between "being mocked" and "going viral" are getting compressed — a two-week-old joke post was already enough to get a group of amateurs called "founding fathers" and "pioneers" in the press.
When a person can be crowned a founding member of some "genre" without ever being asked or informed, does this passive identity — handed down by an outside community's collective vote — become an unavoidable fate for more amateurs in the algorithmic age to come?
These six themes are the fixed frame INCODER checks every cultural signal against — less a conclusion, more a set of lenses. Put one on and the same story grows a different shape.
A single joke post passed sixteen million views in two weeks and pushed VICE to write a seven-rule field guide. That process compresses a loose, word-of-mouth internet joke into a citable, arguable "spec sheet." When a joke needs to be written down as rules before it can be understood, how much of its original ambiguity survives the process?
Cashyams set out only to name a video category he and his housemates had noticed privately, but ended up, along the way, giving his own X account a new identity: namer of the meme. The amateurs he singled out picked up a different identity at the same moment — founding members of a "genre" they never applied to join. Between those two identities, who actually holds more choice?
Park benches, corner shops, slang strange enough to demand a Google search — this is the checklist Cashyams describes as the necessary ingredients of UK Poo. When an entire idea of "Britishness" can be compressed into an object list, one that explicitly disqualifies footage shot on an actual film camera, does that suggest that some agreed-upon version of "authenticity" carries its own technical spec sheet?
No label, no curator, no centralized machinery driving any of it — the entire "founding father" and "pioneer" coronation was worked out entirely by scattered, anonymous X users arguing it into existence. D-Block Europe and KSI themselves still haven't had a chance to say anything about the title assigned to them.
"You can't be filming UK poo on a film camera" — buried in Cashyams's line is a precise technical standard: the footage has to look cheap and amateur to qualify. When looking bad becomes a deliberately pursued aesthetic spec, does that suggest the algorithm's attention mechanism has already learned to recognize, and reward, one very specific shape of roughness?
Cashyams himself admits the joke carries "definitely classist and racial undertones" — but argues that, because he made it as a "fairly lower-class Black person," it's different, a form of self-deprecation. Meanwhile, the mocked amateurs seem to be converting that same visibility into music-career entry points. When ridicule becomes a rare, free channel of exposure, is this a survival strategy improvised out of scarcity rather than choice?
Cashyams keeps insisting UK Poo is self-deprecating humor, something that lets people laugh together "regardless of race, gender, political affiliations." That claim only holds up if the people being mocked genuinely count themselves inside that "everyone" — and Savvy's repeated public performances of the same bar, along with three acts booking a joint show, seem to confirm exactly that premise: they did choose to join in.
But Jamie Watts's criticism leaves open another possibility: if a group of amateurs with no resources to shape their own image discover that being mocked is, for now, the only channel of visibility that actually works, is "choosing to join the laughter" really a choice at all, or just the only move that pays off under a deeply unequal set of resources? This record has no answer yet, only a question left open: once the line between being seen and being mocked blurs, and only the former reliably converts into a career, who can actually afford to refuse joining the joke?
This report records the state of observation at this moment.
View counts on the UK Poo meme are still climbing as this report is filed, and the announced joint show has no confirmed date. Part of this record may be redefined, or entirely overturned, by the next round of online discussion.
Observation continues.
