One fateful day in July, Julian Shapiro-Barnum approached a boy in a Brooklyn park. “Good corn on the cob,” the host of the popular web series Recess Therapy told the 7-year-old.
You are likely familiar with what happened next. tariq — now known to many as Corn Kid — he gushed about his favorite yellow food. The video went viral, conveying infectious enthusiasm and incredible puns and making corn the envy of other vegetables.
“I mean, look at this thing,” Tariq says, clutching a half-eaten corn of corn. “I can’t imagine a more beautiful thing.”
The Internet quickly caught up with the Corn Kid. Tariq’s interview with Recess Therapy, which hit platforms in early August, garnered more than 3.4 million views on YouTube (a TikTok post earned more than 23 million). A version of the interview with a catchy song has been used in more than 716,000 TikTok videos. … and counting.
“I don’t know if he would have brought it up,” Shapiro-Barnum tells me over Zoom. “But he was what he was ready to talk about.”
@schmoyoho intro song for any meal/snack with corn 🌽 – from an iconic interview on @doingthings ♬ It’s Corn – Tariq & The Gregory Brothers & Recess Therapy
Other Recess Therapy clips have exploded since the show entered the social media scene in 2021. (It may have crossed virtual paths with a Komodo dragon-obsessed boy named Dillon.) Still, creator Shapiro-Barnum, who is 23, says he didn’t do it. He didn’t expect Tariq’s interview to be so big.
The boy’s sincere appreciation for the snack warmed cold and pampered hearts everywhere. South Dakota named Tariq its official “corn-bassador,” and actor Kevin Bacon covered the song on acoustic guitar. People continue to pay tribute to the Corn Kid with goofy costumes, awesome chalk drawings, and their own corncobs.
It’s really nice and cathartic in a weird way to see someone find such joy in something so simple.
Julian Shapiro-Barnum, host of Recess Therapy
Recess Therapy’s Instagram account has 2.4 million followers and is filled with adorable and hilarious interviews with young children. (Shapiro-Barnum says her goal is to interview kids ages 4 to 7, though clearly it’s adults who have been most excited about Corn Kid.) Children express their thoughts and opinions about all kinds of things in Recess Therapy videos, from the environment. to Thanksgiving to the dinosaurs.
“It’s like a really fun, feel-good talk show where my friends and I walk around Brooklyn, New York, and occasionally other places, and see what kids there are thinking and talking about,” Shapiro-Barnum. He says.
On Zoom, Shapiro-Barnum is humorous and passionate about his performance. He describes his interview with Tariq: “I think he just got the corn from him,” he says. “He was really vibrating.” When I ask him who else fans of Recess Therapy’s Corn Kid should watch, he shows me Miles and Sloane.
Corn cut!
Screenshot from CNET
Usually when we’re looking for interviews, “we ask pretty much everyone who walks by,” he says, adding that a team of people, not just him, work on Recess Therapy videos.
“A lot of people say no,” says Shapiro-Barnum. “And you never know what you’re going to get. I’m constantly surprised and delighted by the things kids have to say.”
He filmed Tariq’s interview during a food festival in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The older woman in the video with Tariq, laughing off to the side, is Tariq’s grandmother.
His talk lasted less than 15 minutes. We’ve seen the first couple of them. (I asked Shapiro-Barnum for outtakes, but he said the best parts are already available.)
Shapiro-Barnum can’t explain why the Corn Kid took off the way it did: “It’s up to chance what the internet finds,” she says, but it sure helps that Tariq’s reaction to the corn seems so genuine.
“It’s really nice and cathartic in a weird way to see someone find such joy in something so simple,” says Shapiro-Barnum. “I think it’s hard these days to find positivity and something uplifting. Even a lot of ‘uplifting content,’ in quotes, seems forced to me.”
Shapiro-Barnum has now conducted two interviews with Tariq. A memorable moment for him comes during the second. Tariq talks even more about, you guessed it, his favorite lumpy snack, and fights Shapiro-Barnum in a “corn spade fight.”
“It was so gross,” says Shapiro-Barnum. They would both eat the corn and bang on it and “the kernels and gunk would fly everywhere. That was a fun moment. He’s very playful.”
Although Tariq isn’t conducting interviews, Shapiro-Barnum says he thinks it’s all been “really fun” for the corn-loving kid.
“I think he really enjoyed all of this,” says Shapiro-Barnum.
That is absolutely corntastic news.
Source: www.cnet.com