Role-playing is all the rage on TikTok, which usually means making a video in which someone cosplays and welcomes you to a fantasy tavern (opens in new tab) or offers you a quest (opens in new tab). Over the last month, a new role-playing trend has been sweeping the platform. It is called "dabloons" and the hashtag has over 730 million views (opens in new tab).

TikToker's Sweezy (open in new tab) sparked the trend, posting a slideshow (open in new tab), offering burgers to hungry viewers and ending with the punchline that it takes "4 dabloons" as a cat with four claws demands. (This image was previously an Instagram meme (opens in new tab)). Some continued the gag with slideshows and videos (open in new tab) offering fresh stews, soups, and RPG shopping experiences, while others featured cats and other characters (open in new tab).

Eventually, players began recording their wealth and inventory on note apps, paper character sheets, and entire spreadsheets (open in new tab) of doubloons accounting. And with wealth comes crime. [There are robbers who demand viewers' doubloons (opens in new tab), self-proclaimed doubloons launderers (opens in new tab), and counterfeiters whose fakes are revealed at the end of the video. Apparently there are also doubloons hit men," as evidenced by this document (opens in new tab) that warns of an entire economy rising up, complete with its own black market, and the inflation that will surely follow.

If you are puzzled by all of this, you are not alone. Quite a few of the videos posted to this hashtag are by people who are baffled by this nonsense (opens in new tab). But the Internet has always been a place where people will take anything "haha, just being serious" and anything can win a bunch of made up rules overnight and become a game. Like the "game" you lost (opens in new tab).

It won't be long before the people of Dublin start asking questions. They have created a fictional economy, but is Dublon as made up as cryptocurrency? On the contrary, how is doublon any more made up than money not handed out to cats on the Internet?" Capitalism, when you really think about it, is all just a game we try to pretend we are playing.

Anyway, I hear that costumed women are selling products that have not been affected by the doubloon inflation crisis at competitive prices (opens in new tab).