Since the arrest of Sean Combs in September, it was impossible to scroll very far on Twitter, TikTok or Instagram without coming across a macabre joke about the rapper and entrepreneur better known as Diddy. Everything from his alleged freak outs to bottles of baby oil seized by authorities from Combs’ home have become fodder for jokes for teens on the Internet. In a recent report On the online game Roblox, which is particularly popular with children, researchers found more than 600 “Diddy”-themed games, including “Survive Diddy” and various “Diddy Party” simulators.

Most of these children likely had limited knowledge of Combs before his arrest last month in New York, where he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. For those born in the 2000s, Diddy’s cultural omnipresence peaked while they were still toddlers. Now details are emerging on the disgraced hip-hop mogulincluding the seizure of the now infamous “thousands” of bottles of baby oil from his home, as well as reports of videotapes of his so-called “freak-offs”, during which Diddy would drug guests and would engage in sexual acts, shape their perspective. It seems that an adult generation today has made him shorthand for bogeyman.

The trend became so widespread that teachers took to TikTok to lament the prevalence of Diddy jokes in the classroom. A teacher went viral last month after a list of words “banned” in their classroom began circulating online. Alongside Generation Alpha stalwarts like skibidi toilet and rizz, Diddy’s name was there. Many teachers on the so-called #teachertok have shared similar videos. Riaan duRand, a teacher in South Africa, went viral on TikTok earlier this month after invoking Diddy as a threat in his high school class. “The next person to talk to will be on Diddy’s list,” he announces to the noisy class, who immediately fall silent.

“They don’t say ‘no gay’ anymore. In our school, it has now become ‘no Diddy’,” he tells me over the phone. “When Diddy’s story came out, the school was completely fascinated by the story, and that was before we knew it involved minors. So it was just baby oil bottles, it was tunnels, and everyone was talking about it.

DuRand says he was inspired by another go-to viral trend, “English or Spanish,” initially made popular by TikToker, @alfonsopinpon_ who would approach people and ask them “English or Spanish?” » and respond in the language of your choice: “The one who moves first is gay. » Clips of men standing frozen in response quickly went viral. “English or Spanish were very trendy. And I thought, well, I’ll do the new English or Spanish. And I said, “Well, if you don’t stay quiet now, you’re the ones on Diddy’s list.” And the whole class went silent.

After the video went viral, duRand says he went back and asked his students if they were really Diddy: “I was like, ‘Guys, how many of you actually knew who Diddy was? before the story comes out? And there were about five or six who said they knew who he was, but it really put him in the spotlight with the younger generation.

Of course, not everyone finds jokes funny. Diddy’s alleged crimes are horrific, and duRand says he faced a lot of backlash for seemingly making light of a serious situation. “It definitely opened up discussions in class, debating what was funny and what wasn’t,” he says. “But I don’t think teenagers think beyond the bottle of baby oil. They don’t think beyond the meme.

Ryan Broderick, who runs Substack cultural newsletter Waste Daypoints to teenagers’ propensity for dark humor as the reason why it seems Diddy memes have invaded the Internet. “There are people who still wear T-shirts that say ‘Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.’ I think when you’re dealing with an age group as young as the average TikTok user, they’re both interested in current events and also like bold humor. I think this is true for every cohort of young people online,” he says. “It’s kind of a classic thing.”

Today’s young people, infinitely more connected than previous generations, interpret the world around them in a familiar, albeit accelerated, way. Broderick, who is a millennial, says there’s a direct corollary to Michael Jackson, who was the butt of many jokes in high school when he was younger. “It could just be that these things are moving faster simply because media is moving faster. I remember all kinds of Michael Jackson jokes in high school and college, but the culture wasn’t as fast-paced and there wasn’t really a way to create content in the same way,” he says. “It’s a lot easier now to go and find out what everyone is talking about. Whereas 20 years ago, you couldn’t easily Google a new meme, a new piece of slang, or the new story that everyone is telling in class or whatever. There’s a lot more access to this stuff now, which I think means it’s evolving more quickly as well.

That’s why duRand started her TikTok channel in the first place. “I need to know what’s going on so I can communicate with my children,” he explains. “You need to be able to communicate with your children on their level. And that’s why I’m doing the TikTok and trying to find out what’s going on. And for anyone who thinks teenagers’ fascination with Diddy is a sign of a larger moral failure, even kids seem to know when a joke is dead. DuRand says this week’s new revelations of a 10-year-old aspiring rapper who Diddy allegedly drugged and raped in a New York hotel during an audition in 2005 soured the mood because of the jokes. “I think especially when the (new) allegations came out, it really killed the mood.”