If you haven’t heard yet, a vibe shift is coming. That could apply to music, art, and pop culture, but “vibe” has also increasingly been used to describe feelings, trends, and memes. What about beachy waves? Are they a vibe? Not if you ask controversial beauty influencer Alexandra Peirce, aka HRH Collection, who provided a viral sound that’s been used in more than 160,000 TikToks.
The sound
The audio that’s most popular on TikTok features a woman saying, “It’s not the vibe,” and then quickly screaming, “Stop!” The sound was posted by slopppy_topppy on Nov. 25, and includes a visual from what appears to be Skyrim. The “Stop!” is amplified to make it look like it blasted a character into a wall. It has more than 3 million views.
While “It’s not the vibe” is out of context in that clip, people applied it to whatever their definition of “not the vibe” was, whether it’s intrusive thoughts or intrusive dogs.
“When your tote bag keeps falling down because of your puffer jacket and you hate winter,” wrote julilucix.
Where’s it from?
The sound is from a July 2021 video titled “SHUT UP IM STRESSED,” from vlogger and jewelry designer Alexandra Peirce, aka HRH Collection. She addresses several topics in a rambling intro, then directs her rage at “beachy waves,” which she declares “outdated.” If a stylist suggests beachy waves for a new look, Peirce doesn’t “trust your vibe.”
After a few more minutes of obsessively fixing her hair and failing to complete several sentences, she says, “Do you think people in, like, France are doing beachy waves? Like, it’s not the vibe. Stop!”
Peirce has many other similar clips. In a typical video, she fidgets with her hair and argues with herself. She’s been parodied. She’s also no stranger to controversy: Peirce was called out for a series of racist videos about Asians in 2018 and has been accused of ripping off her jewelry designs. She has also been accused of being unhealthily fixated on being “skinny.”
And yet, she seems to have developed a new audience on TikTok, one perhaps less familiar with her past content and more engaged with her contextless, unhinged persona. She still has more than 290,000 followers on YouTube; a TikTok account that posts short clips from HRH Collection’s YouTube, and was just created in January, has more than 105,000 followers.
But some TikTokers have called her out. In January, user nattyissues talked about a fatphobic tweet thread Peirce posted, as well as tweets from 2021 in which she went on a rant about Black-owned businesses. “This behavior is so ugly and so weird,” nattyissues says.
Sound off
The Daily Dot has reached out to Peirce for comment. But yes, there are mashups of the sound. Here, the “Stop” is mashed up with MC Hammer and Bruno Mars.
This week’s top culture stories
‘Bridgerton’ needs a queer love story in season 3
‘This honestly scared me’: Madonna’s TikTok slow-zooms into a parody trend
Sign up to receive our newsletter and get the best of the internet in your inbox.
