Spend a moment on TikTok or scrolling through Instagram’s Reels and you’ll run across a video by Robert Tolppi.
Or more than one, statistically speaking.
It’s what more than 48,000,000—that’s 48-million—viewers have done in the last four days.
“You payed to have your teeth removed [sic],” a viewer says.
“Trypophobia mixed with dentophobia,” says another.
That’s the extreme fear of clusters of small holes or bumps, coupled with a fear of the dentist. To which more than 29,000 viewers suggest they can relate.
“This is making me want to cry and puke [oh] my god,” another adds, 63,207 viewers ‘nodding’ in agreement.
They’re speaking their minds about a six-second, hyper-viral video racking up almost 10 million views per day.
It shows the alleged aftermath of a man with dental veneers having just bitten into a pear.
What most are still stuck with is the question of whether the video is real. Whether Tolppi, in fact, lost his veneers—they’re actually crowns—to a pear.
@roberttolppi @Tana Mongeau girl #veneers #dentalwork ♬ Spongebob Closing Theme Song Music – Ocean Floor Orchestra
Spoiler alert.
We heard from Tolppi—a content creator with more than a million followers who has collaborated with Warner Bros., Hello Fresh, Anker, and other brands—who confirmed with the Times that the video, in fact, is.
A dentist chimes in as well: “I’ll tell you guys[,] those are actually crowns… but yeah maybe he was on temporary cement, and they just fell off, no worries just go to the dental office to have them re-cemented.”
Just enough certainty in this dentist’s comment to claim that “it’s physically impossible to bite something that way.”
But just enough doubt to suggest a visit to the dentist to have the crowns recemented.
Spoiler alert.
In an email to the Times, Tolppi says, “The virality of my videos depends on references to popular culture and current events discussed online.”
This one is hyper-viral, perhaps his most popular ever. His first, posted to YouTube on March 16, 2019, features his rendition of La Campanella by Franz Liszt.
As to his Veneers vs Pear video, he says it’s a reference to yet another viral video, “where influencer Tana Mongeau loses one of her crowns.”
There, too, commenters “mistakenly identified [it] as a veneer,” he says.
Tolppi suggests the cost of the veneers he lost to a pear is $10,000.
Ten-thousand dollars might actually get you three to four veneers, which are priced per tooth, but a full mouth of veneers costs an average of $25,000 to $30,000.
“I use various techniques,” Tolippi says of the video, “including computer-generated imagery (CGI), to bring the evidently impossible yet comedic scenarios in my short-form content to life.
“The video in question, featuring crowns stuck in a pear after I took a bite, relies on such effects.”
The hyper-viral video is a brilliant work of CGI.