'Beaning' Is The New Flaming Bag Of Crap On The Porch

In yet another harrowing realization surrounding the painfully inevitable passage of time, not only have the fashion trends and technology of our youth – high-waisted jeans and portable CD-players -- grown obsolete, it seems all of our favorite teenage hijinks have also somehow managed to go out of style. Egging? so 1985. TP-ing? The 2000's called, they want their high school shenanigans back. Ding Dong Ditch? More like get an AARP card, psh. 

Modern, arguably apocalyptic, times call for modern, arguably apocalyptic, solutions, and as such, today's youth has found a new, social media-inspired means (or, should I say beans) to express their teen angst – a practice called “beaning." Beaning, like its predecessors, TP-ing and egging, is pretty self-explanatory. You head to the store, buy “unnaturally large quantity of beans,” as The Guardian put it, grab a can opener (presumably an electric one, as if you're anything like my zoomer self, you too often conflate the hand-operated variety with a medieval torture device), head to the homes of your friends, enemies, or curmudgeonly neighbors and dump your containers of legumes across their welcome mats. Think of it as a chickpea-centric take on the ‘ol flaming dog poop prank – which I’m sure none of us know absolutely anything about. 

Yet just like most Zoomer tomfoolery, it seems this trend's widespread popularity stems from TikTok, where over the past several months, users have posted videos of themselves executing the prank under the hashtags #BeanBandits and sometimes #Beaning, where some particularly bean-tastic clips have garnered millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes, further proving that all it takes to go viral is a can of beans. 

Although TikTok-ing teens may be eating up the trend of bean-ing like, well, a bowl of three-bean-soup on a chilly, late autumn day, it seems not everyone is to thrilled with its popularity, namely authorities in the UK, where it seems the prank has garnered particular prominence – an occurrence probably not unrelated to the fact that the British put beans on pretty much anything. 

“It has come to the attention of the police that a new trend has started by groups of youths called ‘beaning,’” Michelle Owens of the West Yorkshire Police told local paper recently told the Yorkshire Evening Post. “This involves youths throwing the contents of a can of beans over properties, very similar to the trend of throwing eggs at properties.”

As such, Owens advised adults to remain on the lookout for suspicious behaviors – namely, sneaking away with several cans of legumes like a bean in the night. 

“If you work in a shop, please can you be aware of youths buying large quantities of cans of beans,” she advised. "If you have children living at home, please be mindful if you see them removing cans of beans from the family home."

Beaning – because apparently, we're all really old now.

Top Image: Shutterstock/TikTok

For more internet nonsense, follow Carly on Instagram @HuntressThompson_ on TikTok as @HuntressThompson_, and on Twitter @TennesAnyone.