Here's What That Viral Dinosaur TikTok Video Is About

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Many of us have been wondering what that viral dinosaur TikTok means--here's the viral video explained.

Many of us have been wondering what that viral dinosaur TikTok means--here's the viral video explained. Genuine tears well up in the eyes of Eliza Petersen in her viral TikTok as she says, "Meatier!" She is wearing a paper beard to show that she is God. She is having a conversation with a confused angel, also played by Peterson.

She--as God-- is crying because there's just been a terrible mix-up and it has resulted in the demise of the dinosaurs. Thinking about mass extinction makes Peterson feel incredibly sad.

The thing is, God said, "meatier," but the angel (at least in this TikTok explanation of the dinosaurs' disappearance) understood "meteor." So, we can deduce that the angel sent a meteor to Earth, but that God actually just wanted his gigantic lizards to have more muscle--to be meatier. It's a play on words. It's not life-changing, but it's incredibly funny. Seeing Eliza Petersen's raw emotion as she says the words is what hooks the viewer.

BuzzFeed reports that Petersen, 23, works as a paralegal, but on the weekends she volunteers at the Natural History Museum of Utah's paleontology department. She's been busy working with fossils for the past four years. She's even thinking of going back to college to study paleontology.

"I think I’m around dinosaurs enough that I’ve grown this level of appreciation that most people don’t have. I thought about how it would be so sad to obliterate the dinosaurs, and simply by accident too, so I started to tear up."

Petersen says that she didn't come up with the pun--it's one that her dad has been telling since the '80s. This viral video is a family joke! Neither of them could believe it when the TikTok version of her dad's wordplay garnered more than a million views in one day. Now, more than 2.9 million people have watched it.

We, here at Moms.com, can appreciate Petersen's video and the meme above. As mothers, we probably know more about dinosaurs than we ever wanted to. Suddenly, "parasaurolophus" comes up in daily conversations. We philosophize with our children about whether a T-rex or a spinosaurus would win in a fight. Of course, they lived on different continents and in different  periods, so the match is impossible, but let's use our imaginations.

Petersen certainly used her imagination when coming up with the concept for her TikTok. The 27-second video is worth a watch. It's guaranteed to make everyone laugh.

Source: BuzzFeed