If you are a human being with any fleeting interest in current events and popular trends, you've most likely come across some variation of dalgona coffee in your feeds over the past few weeks. (If not, catch up here and let me know when you're ready to continue.) It'd be easy to dismiss any of it as a passing food fad except for the fact that it has far and away become the most viral edible thing we've seen in a while, flooding TikTok with billions of views and spilling over onto Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and, yeah, even websites in the form of instructional write-ups for those who are desperate to re-create the trend themselves.
At the risk of sounding like an old person who thinks she has a grasp on what the Youngs are doing, I am—we are, Delish is—willing to posit this: Whipped drinks borne of the #dalgonacoffeechallenge have become as popular as they have because the world is currently enduring the perfect set of circumstances for the most viral content of all time. It's oftentimes not worth it for us to delve into why something that blew up online, well, blew up—but this is not one of those times. We are in Whipped Drinks World for the long haul, and they will become a part of your life for the foreseeable future.
Seriously! My hypothesis? Times of unprecedented emotional stress not only require a physical outlet (kindly admit that 2019 you would've never taken the energy to whisk anything 400 times), but they also force us to become creative in ways we might ordinarily not be. And you know what we need when we've done something a bit outside of our norms? Sweet, sweet social media validation. Et voila, all you cool cats and kittens: We. are. all. whipping. everything.
Dr. Luke Ayers, a psychology professor at Widener University, isn't surprised that such an effortful activity has caught on with kids (and, therefore, the rest of us). Firstly, most of them have never experienced this vein or level of tenseness before. "This is an incredibly stressful time! That's pretty well-known," he confirms. "The thing that might not be as well-known is that the only thing more stressful than isolation is if animals—including humans—can see each other but not interact; that's actually more stressful than total isolation." Gen Z is all up on TikTok watching each other do things but not being able to see or touch each other, and so they are more in need of an outlet than ever before.
"A quiet, meditative activity [like baking] that's actually physical is very calming," he continues. And, sure, yeah, that methodicalness might soothe some, but others need to fucking destroy some shit in order to cope with coronavirus and all its accompanying stressors: "There are a lot of active coping strategies, and one of the better strategies is physical activity. Your body is pumped up and you have to vent it somehow—whipping something 400 times might really make you feel good."
Wanna whip it good? Get the recipe for our OG dalgona coffee, plus 9 new whipped drinks.
But forget the physicality of it all for a second. Unlike the viral Frapps of yesteryear, these drinks involve new and unusual processes for being made, not just a hit of food coloring. That's why they're garnering major engagement—and sticking around. And that's how Valentina Mussi, the 21-year-old behind @SweetPortfolio, continues to invent drinks that go viral each and every time she posts. It's not a coincidence, she thinks, that she came across dalgona coffee about a month ago, despite having been active on TikTok (where she has 441,000 followers to her 265,000 Instagram ones) for more than a year.
When she decided to do her own video of making the coffee, it earned more than 300,000 likes on both platforms: "It was just a cool, easy recipe, especially at the very beginning of quarantine. I also figured people would be looking for things to make with staples they already have in their cupboards. We were all going to Starbucks or Dunkin' or whatever, and we just forgot about that stuff!" Now we're at home, bored in quarantine, though, and we all "want fancy drinks, so I just thought, 'I'm gonna make versions for myself.'"
She continues to be inundated with requests for whipped literally everything, and she's happy to keep at it because she's never seen such wild engagement before. (Stay tuned: coming soon is a fluffy Trolls Oreo milk extravaganza and maybe a whipped key lime pie.) Her whipped strawberry milk post is at nearly 700,000 likes, which is about 25 million Instagram impressions, she confirmed last week. She believes most of those reached are even younger than she is: "It's cool how it's invoked a nostalgic feeling for people like you and me [Ed. note: I am...older than Valentina, god bless her], but for kids, it's exciting because it's pink and sweet and fluffy and cute, and they've grown up being more obsessed with aesthetics because of social media. My 10-year-old sibling describes everything as 'aesthetic.'"
Nostalgia feels good right now. Aesthetic feels good right now. ("Social media is rewarding if it goes well," Dr. Ayers mentions, as "it can be a loose proxy for getting some of that social interaction. 'Hey, look what I did,' and all.") Kenny Hong Kyoung-soo, the founder of Cafe Cha, a milk tea chain with seven locations across Korea and Japan, was looking for a way to tap into that nostalgia in The Great Before, when he was getting ready to open his first outpost.
"I had the idea in 2018 to create a new beverage that would incorporate traditional Korean dalgona, and it took me a year to get the recipe just right," he says. "As soon as we launched [in September 2019], it was an immediate hit in Korea because dalgona represents fond childhood memories for so many Koreans. With the viral #dalgonacoffeechallenge, we've definitely noticed increased interest from international customers, both online and in our stores."
People whipping instant coffee with the express intent of making TikToks are maybe not aware of the cultural significance behind the drink (Kyoung-Soo describes the combination of dalgona candy and milk tea as "practically a national treat that evokes the freedom we experienced after the Korean War"), but he's excited to see how it has invoked nostalgia, and subsequently joy, around the world: "This [allows] us to be the first to bring dalgona back in a trendy way—and now beyond Korea's borders. It's a small reminder of better times. And it's easy to make with just two ingredients from the pantry."
The overwhelming online enthusiasm for the drink has translated into more IRL whipped and dalgona drinks in his cafes, and he doesn't plan to stop experimenting with what else he can offer customers and followers.
But until, you know, we are all released from this waking nightmare and can happily overpay for our blah cold foam-topped drinks again, we're all going to continue whipping ourselves into a frenzy.
