Prince Harry Frostbite Meme Takes Off With Viral TikTok Dance Trend

Prince Harry has inspired a new viral trend on TikTok as creators have started using clips from the audiobook of his memoir Spare in their videos.

Since the publication of his "raw" and "unflinching" book on January 10, clips from the audio version, which is read by the prince himself, have gone viral from his rendition of "Your Song" by Elton John to a dramatic reading of the lyrics of "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls.

One section of both the print and audiobook versions of Spare to have caused some of the most commentaries is the section in which he describes getting frostbite on his penis following a 2011 trek to the North Pole before Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding.

"My penis was oscillating between extremely sensitive and borderline traumatized. The last place I wanted to be was Frostnipistan," he wrote of the injury.

This sentence in particular has captured the imagination of online creators, with the clip being uploaded to TikTok and used as a "sound" that users can layer their own videos over. This has sparked a number of viral dance videos, as creators match interpretative movements to the narration.

One user, rosieowen515's dance video to the clip has been viewed over a million times in 72 hours since being uploaded. Captioned "Prince Harry's todger x," with the additional line; "bit graphic bbs x" the video has received in excess of 93,000 likes.

"BORDERLINE TRAUMATISED," one user commented on the video, with another adding: "I love this generation. We officially have a TikTok dance for Prince Harry's book."

British TikToker cocolodge also uploaded a dance video to the clip for her 350,000 followers, with a caption reading: "GCSE drama performance of Prince Harry's new book."

The original audio clip uploaded by user greatbritishmemes has to date been used in over 2,700 TikTok videos, with the trend increasing and leading to other creators mixing it into new audio.

One of these sees the clip mixed with the 1999 pop hit "Man I Feel Like A Woman" by Shania Twain.

TikTok user _taylorroche is among the many who have used the sound created by the account thisisme.inanutshell, gaining over 170,000 views of his lipsynched dance captioned: "Man, I feel borderline traumatised."

Social media is not the only place to have picked up on the frostbite anecdote. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel ran a number of sketches centered around the excerpt, most recently parodying it in a fictional children's book titled The Prince and The Penis, on his Monday night show.

On Sunday, comedian Chelsea Handler also made a reference to the prince's penile predicament in her opening monologue at the Critics' Choice Awards on Sunday. Discussing the nominees which included actress Niecy Nash for her role in Ryan Murphy's Dahmer series, she said:

"Dahmer became the third highest viewed show on Netflix, which a combined watch time of 1 billion hours. Which, apparently, is the same amount of time we're going to have to listen to Prince Harry talk about his frostbitten penis. It's enough already!"

Newsweek reached out to representatives of Prince Harry for comment.

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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