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# Strawberry and Banana in love, users in crisis. My dive into TikTok’s weirdest AI trend

I bet you’ve scrolled past at least one of these vertical videos recently. A crying strawberry discovering her partner cheated. A potato hooked up to an IV drip while a whole chorus of vegetables sobs by the hospital bed. It’s absurd, kind of unhinged, but somehow keeps people watching.



After seeing dozens of these pop up, I decided to look under the hood. Who actually started this? How much money are creators pulling in from cartoon vegetables? And why are researchers starting to flag this stuff as a legit issue?



Here’s what I found.







### How a ChatGPT tool turned fruit into a 300-million-view phenomenon

Every weird internet rabbit hole has an origin story. This one traces back to an Object Talk feature built by AI Century, where ChatGPT generates micro-scripts that creators then plug into AI video generators.



One channel took that basic setup and turned it into an absolute juggernaut. The account [@ai.cinema021](https://www.tiktok.com/@ai.cinema021) launched a soap-opera series called Fruit Love Island — complete with paternity tests and banana-strawberry melodrama.



Watch this: <https://www.tiktok.com/@ai.cinema021/video/7617098849072598303>



The numbers blew up fast: over 300 million views and 3.3 million followers within nine days of launching in March 2026. Once that hit, “fruit soap opera” stopped being an isolated meme and became an actual genre.



### The monetization reality check 

Naturally, once the format proved it could farm attention, it multiplied. Scroll through TikTok's anthropomorphic fruit tag now, and you’ll find pregnant carrots, eggplants playing doctor, and even subgenres of pregnant Coca-Cola bottles undergoing the exact same drama.



Watch this: <https://www.tiktok.com/@aibrainrotss/video/7640944091756383518>



The toolmakers caught on immediately. Platforms like [Media.io](http://media.io/) started offering templates with presets like “cheating apple” or “sad strawberry,” allowing anyone to spit out a mini-drama in two minutes without touching real animation software.



So, are these creators getting rich? The quick answer is no.



Looking through creator breakdowns on Reddit, YouTube Shorts payouts sit around $0.05 to $0.15 per thousand views. A video hitting a million views nets maybe $50 to $150. Even @ai.cinema021 publicly noted they weren't turning a real profit after TikTok began removing their clips. The people making actual income rely on sheer volume — posting dozens of videos daily across ten channels — or selling “how-to” workflow guides to beginners.



### The darker pipeline behind the cute animations

This is where the story takes an uncomfortable turn. Behind the harmless-looking cartoons, researchers are tracking a shift toward graphic imagery.



An August 2026 [study](https://gnet-research.org/2026/08/10/fruit-vegetable-and-brain-rot-the-use-of-generative-ai-to-produce-violence-based-viral-trends/) by the research group GNET documents how the exact same fruit characters kids recognize from cute clips are being escalated into graphic scenes of torture and mutilation. Media outlets covering the report noted that researchers flagged this content for its “radicalizing potential” on young viewers, calling on platforms to step up moderation.



The mechanism is simple: because the character on screen is just a tomato, the absurdity creates emotional distance. That distance lowers a viewer’s natural reflex to flinch at violent visuals. On top of that, creator discussions on Reddit point out a persistent pattern: female fruit characters are overwhelmingly the ones being humiliated or attacked—an issue easy to overlook when the character is a literal strawberry.



### How to approach these feeds moving forward

You don't need to quit vertical video entirely. But it’s worth paying closer attention to what pops up on your feed. And especially what kids are watching, because “it's just a cartoon” doesn't always apply anymore. Keeping a skeptical eye on silly formats is usually the smartest move.

Unpacking TikTok’s AI fruit soap opera trend. Discover how accounts hit 300M views, what creators actually earn, and why researchers are flagging the darker side of this content.

TikTok AI Fruit Trend: Monetization, Brainrot & Safety Risks

From 300 million views on "Fruit Love Island" to low-payout realities and GNET safety warnings: How ChatGPT soap operas turned cute cartoons into an alarming internet phenomenon.

Strawberry and Banana in Love, Users in Crisis: Inside TikTok’s Weirdest AI Trend

# Spider-Man is breaking records. Why do people want other superheroes to retire?

Every time a new Spider-Man movie or game comes out, I find myself asking the same question: how does a 63-year-old character keep beating franchises that are younger, bigger, and backed by huge cinematic universes?

Superhero fatigue was supposed to catch up with Spider-Man years ago. It hasn’t.

The latest numbers make that pretty hard to argue with. Spider-Man: Brand New Day crossed $2 billion globally in just three weeks, making it the second-fastest film ever to reach that number, behind only Avengers: Endgame.

At the same time, we keep hearing that audiences are tired of superheroes.

Apparently, both things can be true. And that makes Spider-Man one of the best examples of how a character can survive even when the surrounding genre starts to struggle.

### The numbers, if you’re curious

Brand New Day opened with $360 million domestically and $932 million worldwide. That was the biggest domestic opening weekend ever, even beating Avengers: Endgame.

It reached $1 billion in six days and passed $2 billion by its third weekend. The final split was roughly $785 million in North America and $1.23 billion internationally.

And this isn’t just about one successful movie.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) finished with $1.92 billion worldwide without ever being released in China, which has historically been one of Marvel’s biggest markets.

Then there’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It was the first non-Disney, non-Pixar film to win the category since Rango in 2011.

And in gaming, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 sold 2.5 million copies in its first 24 hours, making it the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios title ever.

That looks like more than a big marketing budget. Something about the character himself is clearly working.

🎬 [Watch the spoiler-free video review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsfTwkGYeHQ)

### An ordinary guy with extraordinary problems

\
[](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsfTwkGYeHQ)The easiest explanation is: “It’s Marvel. The brand sells itself.”

Except recent superhero flops have shown that the Marvel name alone doesn’t guarantee an audience anymore.

Spider-Man works because being relatable is part of the character. It was there from the beginning.

Most famous superheroes are built around what makes them exceptional. They’re gods, kings, billionaires, super-soldiers, or geniuses.

Peter Parker is different. He worries about paying the rent, has trouble with relationships, works, and makes mistakes.

And, somewhere between all of that, he also has to swing between skyscrapers and save people.

The famous line about great power and great responsibility isn’t really about having superpowers. It’s about being given more responsibility than you feel ready for.

That idea is easy to understand, no matter who is playing Peter Parker.

And that may be why the character survives every reboot and recast. People are attached to the problems Peter keeps facing.

### Why the multiverse actually worked

That flexibility also helped make the multiverse work.

Spider-Man has never been tied to one version of the story in the public imagination. So when No Way Home brought three generations of live-action Spider-Men together, it felt emotional rather than forced.

Into the Spider-Verse took the same idea in a completely different direction.

The film used the multiverse to experiment with animation, mixing different textures, styles, and frame rates in the same scenes.

In another franchise, that could have felt like a gimmick.

Here, it made sense because the whole point was that anyone can wear the mask.

### Where other superhero franchises are struggling

The industry often talks about “superhero movies” as if they’re all the same. They aren’t.

Audiences don’t seem to be rejecting superheroes altogether. They seem to be getting tired of predictable origin stories and cinematic universes that feel like homework.

Spider-Man has managed to avoid some of that fatigue.

The emotional story stays personal, whether you’re watching a live-action movie, an animated film, or playing a game. The stakes can be huge, but the problems usually come back to Peter himself.

The franchise is also willing to play with its own history instead of treating continuity like something that can never be touched. Old versions, timelines, and characters can come back and collide.

That turns nostalgia into part of the story rather than the whole point of it.

And then there are the risks.

Into the Spider-Verse could easily have been too strange for a mainstream audience. Instead, its visual style became one of the most influential things to happen to animated superhero films in years.

### So, what keeps Spider-Man going?

A character created in 1962 is now in the biggest commercial run of his six-decade history.

Spider-Man keeps working because the things that matter most about him don’t really change. Peter Parker still has concerns. He still makes mistakes. He still has to figure out how to balance ordinary life with extraordinary responsibility.

Everything around him can change — the actor, the animation style, the game, the timeline, even the universe.

But the emotional core still touches us.

And maybe that’s the real lesson for superhero franchises: audiences don’t necessarily need something new every time.

They need something they still care about, presented in a way that feels new.

Brand New Day crosses $2B globally in weeks. Discover how a 63-year-old character keeps beating cinematic universes through relatability, animation risks, and grounded human conflict.

Why Spider-Man Defies Superhero Fatigue & Hits Box Office Records

While superhero fatigue crushes rival franchises, Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits $2 billion in three weeks: Exploring why an ordinary guy with extraordinary problems survives every reboot and multiverse shift.

Spider-Man is Breaking Records. Why Do People Want Other Superheroes to Retire?

Ukraine launches TrophyLab to give vetted international partners access to captured Russian and North Korean military hardware data, technical analysis, and research.

TrophyLab: Ukraine Shares Captured Russian Weapons Intelligence

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