The seminal 1987 horror film “Zepotha” is back on TikTok.

Reaction videos to the film’s gory forest scenes dominate user feeds. TikTok users are digging through their parents’ wardrobes to recreate the vintage outfits from the movie. Fanart of the characters and convoluted theories about the movie’s ambiguous ending keep going viral. The tag #Zepotha has nearly 160 million views, and the movie’s theme song — an ethereal, synth-heavy pop beat — is trending. 

If you don’t remember Zepotha, you’re not alone. Zepotha never existed. 

It’s all part of a clever marketing campaign to promote a new song by the musical artist Emily Jeffri. The 18-year-old singer posted a video about making a fake movie go viral on TikTok by dropping casual mentions of it without any context. She encouraged followers to tell other creators that they “look EXACTLY like the girl from Zepotha” to stir up confusion. Her original video has 7.6 million views. In another video, she recommended bringing up Zepotha “every time a film bro mocks you” to gaslight them into believing that the movie is real. Zepotha is a massive inside joke on TikTok — if you know, you know. 

“Together we will witness new lore develop, main characters will emerge, etc,” Jeffri said in a TikTok posted over the weekend. “We can convince thousands of people that this weirdly titled 80s horror film actually exists.” The trend is working. Within days, the sound featuring Jeffri’s new song was used in over 12,000 videos. Other users leaned into the joke, claiming that they wrote extensive, smutty fanfiction about the film’s tragic protagonists. Fans posted “trailers” of Zepotha, and spread rumors about a 2024 reboot. They posted fake eBay listings for “rare” Zepotha VHS tapes and mint condition posters. When other users expressed doubt or confusion about the movie, Zepotha truthers insisted that their parents had shown them the movie as children. 

“I did NOT watch Zepotha and become traumatized for them to just say we made it up,” a user commented on a TikTok about the movie. 

“old person here (30) i definitely saw a glimpse of zepotha at blockbuster back in the 90s,” another said. “so I CAN CONFIRM IT’S REAL.” Going viral on TikTok was once a perk that fast-tracked artists to making it in the music industry. Now, it’s an expectation. Artists tease previews of their new singles for weeks before actually releasing them, in hopes of manufacturing a trend to accompany their music. Last year, Halsey complained that her label wouldn’t let her release a new song without a “fake” viral moment. Organic virality is possible, but makes TikTok users suspicious. The platform is so saturated with new music that up-and-coming artists are written off as industry plants before they even have the chance to prove otherwise. TikTok users are wary of anyone who claims to have written “the song of the summer” or “the post-breakup song,” especially if the music they wrote conforms to the “TikTok music formula” — pop music made to go viral. 

Sharing any kind of art is an act of vulnerability, but especially so for independent musicians on TikTok. Sharing too earnestly is cringe, and sharing too proudly is artificial. One of the few strategies that actually works is for artists to market to niche internet communities, like fan edits of tragic gay anime pairings.