TikTok is full of owl impressions. (Photo by Julian Stratenschulte / dpa / AFP) / Germany OUT (Photo by JULIAN STRATENSCHULTE/dpa/AFP via Getty Images)
dpa/AFP via Getty Images
What’s with all the bird memes in 2026?
As the Nihilistic Penguin continues his death march across the internet, TikTokers have started hooting like owls.
What Is TikTok’s ‘Owl Impression’ Trend?
All over TikTok, content creators are saying “hoo” into the camera, delivering spot-on impressions of celebrities while mimicking the sound of an owl.
That’s the trend, more or less.
An owl impression might not seem like a lot to work with, but the simplicity of the prompt proved to be a solid launchpad, inspiring a variety of uncannily accurate impressions.
More than 13 thousand videos have been posted on TikTok under the #owlimpression hashtag, with several racking up millions of views, inspiring more owl variants to join the flock.
Turns out, there’s a lot of mileage to be squeezed out of the word “hoo.”
Celebrity owl impressions include the Kardashians, Kristen Stewart, Donald Trump, Jennifer Collidge, Barack Obama, Michael Jackson and more.
Some TikTokers showed off their impressive range of celebrity owl impressions.
Despite TikTok’s recent troubles, the video-sharing platform has always been a plentiful source of fun, whimsical trends, and the owl impression meme has sparked a surprising amount of creativity.
After the initial burst of celebrity impressions, TikTokers began to approach the trend from different angles.
An out of shape owl emerged, followed by jealous girlfriend owl and the ADHD-riddled owl, who is far too distracted to hoot.
Eventually, there was even an owl whose “hoo” was spoken in another language, then dubbed into English.
On X (Twitter), one commentator joined the trend simply by posting an edited screenshot of the lyrics from Hayley Williams’ song, “Good Ol’ Days.”
The wholesome meme proved a welcome respite from the intensity of today’s news cycle, along with the “2026 is the new 2016” nostalgia-posting.
The exact origin of TikTok’s owl trend is currently unknown, but the nocturnal birds have been surprisingly well-represented on the short-form video site for the last couple of years.
Owl Memes Have Trended On TikTok Before
Oddly enough, this isn’t TikTok’s first “owl impression” meme—in late 2024, a clip of a weirdly charismatic elf owl went viral on the platform, inspiring TikTok users to impersonate the owl’s unflappable composure.
Despite all the slow blinking and sleepy head-turning, the elf owl’s aura was unmatched.
In 2025, there was the Owl Arm Trend, in which Gen Z TikTokers contorted their bodies (and stretched their T-shirts) to mimic the shape of a perching owl.
In pop culture, owls tend to symbolize wisdom, a tradition which goes back to Ancient Greece.
On TikTok, the owl might not represent wisdom, but the bird does seem a powerful creative inspiration—at least, when it comes to absurd memes and trends.
MORE FROM FORBES
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2026/01/29/guess-hoo-tiktoks-owl-impression-trend-explained/
