@liamtheimpaler/@noahbeck/TikTok
- A viral party known as "Adrian's Kickback" took place on Friday and Saturday.
- The event went viral on TikTok, drawing massive crowds to Huntington Beach, California.
- According to police, it precipitated 149 arrests.
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A massive, viral party known as "Adrian's Kickback" precipitated nearly 150 arrests in Huntington Beach, California on Saturday night, officials said according to NBC News.
Hype for the party built up over the past week after a video posted by TikTok user @adrian.lopez517 went viral, NBC Los Angeles reported. While the video, and anything else on @adrian.lopez517's account, appears to have been deleted or set to private, the excitement for the party is still clearly visible on TikTok: the hashtag #adrianskickback has amassed over 274 million views.
According to NBC Los Angeles, that the "Adrian" in question originally invited people to "pop out 'n celebrate my bday" in the post. However, the gathering spiraled into a massive party with a guest list that numbered in the thousands and led to police action in Huntington Beach.
'Adrian's Kickback' started with viral social media posts and took off on TikTok
While the original post that started the viral craze appears to have been deleted from TikTok, New York Times technology reporter Taylor Lorenz posted a video clip featuring a person who appears to be Adrian himself and matches the individual featured in other social media clips about the party.
In the clip, Adrian and his friend say that they promoted the gathering initially on Snapchat, and then posted a TikTok on Tuesday.
-Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) May 23, 2021
Dexerto reported that the original viral video, posted by @adrian.lopez517 to TikTok, advertised a BYOE - bring your own everything - gathering at the Huntington Beach firepits at 7:30 pm on May 22. Screenshots of the party flyer appear to be preserved in other TikTok videos.
Over the course of the week, the kickback began to draw major attention on social media
In the span of just a week, the #adrianskickback hashtag has amassed hundreds of millions of views on TikTok, with people making memes and posting about traveling to California in order to attend the party.
Soon, other users were posting on TikTok and other social media platforms about convincing their parents that they knew Adrian. Others made memes speculating about the event.
-Isaiah Navarro (@Zigga_zayzay) May 22, 2021
Celebrities and TikTok stars like 24kGolden and Noah Beck also posted about the event, further popularizing it.
By the time Friday, May 21 rolled around, the kickback hype had spread thoroughly across TikTok and other social media.
Adrian's Kickback took place over two nights in Huntington Beach, leading to chaos and arrests, according to police
BuzzFeed News reported that people began to show up on Huntington Beach on Friday night. On Friday, the Huntington Beach Police Department posted on Facebook about the event, saying that it was "actively monitoring multiple social media posts advertising a large gathering on the beach this evening."
On Saturday evening, the party exploded into chaos. The Huntington Police Department told BuzzFeed News that an estimated 2,500 people were present. CBS Los Angeles reported that participants were setting off fireworks, as seen in one viral video that purports to be of the gathering. Other videos under the hashtag show massive crowds of people in the streets.
The party was eventually declared an unlawful assembly shortly after 7 p.m. on Saturday evening, police told BuzzFeed news, and law enforcement put an emergency 11:30 p.m. curfew in place. The Los Angeles Times reported that, according to a local Huntington Beach business owner, police at one point used tear gas in an attempt to disperse the crowd. Once TikTok user, @TheSyncUp, reported that officers were firing paintballs into the crowd, BuzzFeed News reported, and videographer Sean Carmitchel posted video on Twitter and said that police were deploying "less lethals" towards the crowd.
A total of 149 people - 121 adults and 28 juveniles - were arrested, Huntington Beach Police Department pubic information officer Jennifer Carey told NBC Los Angeles. Those individuals were booked on different changes including vandalism, the firing of dangerous/illegal fireworks, failure to disperse, and curfew violations, according to NBC Los Angeles.
Now, the legacy of "Adrian's Kickback" lives on in social media posts as one of the most chaotic viral events in history. And as for Adrian himself: people on TikTok questioned where he was during the event, and who he was in the first place.
Adrian did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.