Worldoftshirts / Josh Block

With TikTok facing a possible ban, I thought this week I would give a little review of something that exists on the app that I know entirely too much about.

I am *slightly* ashamed to say that I do engage with TikTok pretty much daily. After a stressful day of work, it’s easy to sit down and dissociate for an hour just scrolling, seeing what’s up with some friends that live in my phone.

About a year ago, I came across a curious figure. With the handle worldoftshirts and the hastag #huluchippendalesdance on every single video, a guy in his early 20s sporting a captain’s hat, relatively nondescript glasses, and some impressive sideburns kept showing up on my feed.

His videos were relatively boring and yet he had over 3 million followers. I learned his real name is Joshua Block and he lives in New York City.

Then I discovered an account completely dedicated to tracking this kid’s drinking. You see, Josh frequently posts videos where the only thing he’s doing is sipping a glass of wine, taking a fireball shooter on the subway, or shotgunning a Twisted Tea.

The drink tracker account broke down how many standard drinks were in each beverage, along with the cost, calorie count, and his total BAC based on processing one drink an hour.

It was shocking. Josh regularly would have 18-20 drinks a day with a BAC of .32 or even higher, sometimes breaking .42. For record, the legal limit for driving is .08 in most states. Most people black out by .19 and anything above a .24 is at risk for coma or death.

Along with Josh’s own videos, people also started posting videos of his behavior in public. Suspected to be on the autism spectrum, a new video of Josh’s anti-social behavior seemed to appear every day. He would be vomitting on himself, biting his hand, screaming and running away from fans, or yelling, “I only make 60k a year and I’ve only been to 7 countries!”