There’s a video on YouTube titled “Waffle falling over,” and it delivers as advertised: A waffle stands alone on a stove top for roughly four seconds before falling forward. It’s easy to watch the clip again—did you miss something?
Since being posted in 2013, this six-second video has received more than 3 million views, become a meme, and been remixed by Denny’s. The creator, who posts under the name Schnooleheletteletto, has several more videos of waffles not falling over, as well as an hourlong clip of a spoon taped to a wall, a six-second clip of a guy taking off his shoe in a castle, and an iPhone falling on a waffle.
Schnooleheletteletto, who claims to go by the name Carl von Rövsenap and hail from Sweden, told the Daily Dot he started posting these challenging pieces of art for a simple reason: “I was curious if people would appreciate my ideas.”
“I find deep meaning in these,” he added, “as well as humoristic.”
Asked about the inspiration that fed the waffle video, he offered a look into his creative process: “I was just eating a waffle and thought to myself, ‘If this waffle stood up, it could fall over. I could take a video of it. And show people!’”
While that basically sums up the functional foundation of the Internet, the cause-and-effect approach also mirrors How to Basic, another YouTube channel that produces absurdist art from mundane tasks.
“I don’t really know where my inspiration comes from,” he said. “It is a gift to other people.”
Illustration by Max Fleishman
