'Washington Check' Videos Blow Up On Social Media

SEATTLE, WA — "Hey yo! Washington check!" a teenage girl giggles as the Owl City song "Hello Seattle" begins to swell. "Hello Seattle, I am a mountaineer," the singer's auto-tuned voice croons as images of rain, I-5, and Starbucks cups flash by.

This is a "Washington check" video, and the sub-genre has exploded on the social media app TikTok, which specializes in bizarre, ultra-short (think about 15 seconds) videos.

According to TikTok, more than 5,000 Washington Check videos had been made as of July 30 with about 13 million views around the globe. The videos are part of a larger "state check" trend on the site, spokeswoman Laura Perez said, with around 30,000 videos total. The trend is also big in New Jersey, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

It's hard to tell who made the first Washington Check video, but a TikTok user named @lojotaylo appears have made the most popular one with 62,000 views. It begins with two teens driving in a car mouthing "Hey yo! Washington check!" before showing scenes of ridiculous amounts of rain inundating roofs and local roads.

One strange aspect of the Washington Check videos is that they all use the same audio of the girl saying "Hey yo! Washington check!" and the Owl City song. Some videos are dubbed poorly — probably on purpose.

Here are a few examples:

Washington Check videos are part of a larger group of "check" videos on TikTok. There are the "Rich boy check" type, where a rich kid shows off his big home and driveway full of sports cars. There are also "celebrity relative check" videos, where a person highlights their alleged blood-ties to someone famous. In one video, a girl on a boat takes a video of her father, who looks like Sean Penn.

If you want to see the videos, download the TikTok app and look for the tag #washingtoncheck.