The “holy airball” trend has morphed into a way for nepo babies to gain millions of views by revealing their famous parents. Even normies are going viral by finding or inventing brands that share their last names and replicating the meme.
This may all stem from TikTok videos by Alianna Thiam and the now-grown child actress who flipped off Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover.
Alianna Thiam and Ava Phillipe: “Holy airball”
The “holy airball” meme blew up on TikTok in May 2025 and soon changed into a nepo baby phenomenon. While people originally used it to mock public Ls with basketball blooper footage, it’s now all about your famous or successful parents—real or imagined.
On May 22, Alianna Thiam jumped on the trend with a video about how rapper and record producer Akon is her dad. Her video starts with “told him my dad was in the music industry,” to which the fictional guy responds, “oh, like a manager?”
Then she shows a photo of herself and Akon hugging with the hashtag #holyfreakinairball, indicating that the man who undervalued her parentage missed the mark hard. That slideshow earned her over 4.2 million views.
The next day, @kaceystiktok used the trend to reveal that she acted in an iconic scene from The Hangover as a child.
@kaceystiktok Secrets out 🤭 lol #holyairball #fyp #trending #thehangover #movie #airball #funny #foryoupage #survivor ♬ ECE Marketing Airball – EC Equine Marketing
“I told him I was in a movie,” she wrote in the captions. “He said ‘oh, like an extra in the background?’”
She followed this up with #holyairball, which now boasts over 189,000 videos under its name. This is up from 143,000 on May 28, when we last talked about this meme. Her view count in that post has grown to 11.3 millions views and two million likes.
On May 26, Ava Phillipe made sure to remind everyone that she’s Reese Witherspoon’s daughter with her own holy airball video, gaining 2.1 million views.
The meme that launched a thousand nepo babies
As the trend grew, regular TikTokers started pretending to be nepo babies as a joke, but not everyone got it. Last Monday, @laurabustelo posted a video claiming that her grandfather launched the Café Bustelo coffee brand.
“Told them my family is in the coffee business,” the slideshow reads. “They asked oh like a small coffee shop?”
The final slide shows a line of Café Bustelo products with the caption “HOLY AIRBALL.”
As Laura Bustelo revealed to the New York Times, it was supposed to be a gag, but commenters took it as sincere. She tried adding “for legal reasons this is a joke” to the caption, but users kept treating her like “royalty.”
“I think people just naturally aren’t readers,” she told the Times.
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