Hocus focus: how magicians made a fortune on Facebook

By Ashley Mears

If you were online at some point last spring, there’s a good chance you’ll have scrolled past a video in which a woman squirts whipped cream and chocolate syrup into a toilet bowl. In the video, which was posted on Facebook and TikTok and picked up by various news sites, the woman garlands the mixture with maraschino cherries and rainbow sprinkles, prompting a man behind the camera to gush: “Oh my goodness, that is so extra!” Then she picks up a straw.

The woman later posted a photo of herself with a friend, both apparently sipping merrily from the bowl. “You’re going to get dysentery,” warned one disgusted comment. Of course, she isn’t really drinking a toilet milkshake: the unnerving enthusiasm with which she swirls the whipped cream beneath the rim stops you realising that, unless you suck it, putting a straw in your mouth doesn’t actually bring you into contact with what’s at the other end.