Move over Bean Soup, Burnt Toast and Taxi Cab, because there’s a new supposed ‘theory’ currently overrunning TikTok’s FYP.
For those who haven’t spent every waking moment on TikTok (just me, I guess?),since the dawn of the app, users have made viral moments out of so-called theories.
The Bean Soup theory posits that social media users make every post about themselves (like saying they don’t eat beans when encountering a bean soup recipe), while the Burnt Toast theory suggests that minor inconveniences, like burning your toast, are in service of a silver lining predetermined by the universe.
Needless to say, neither of those are actual confirmed theories in a scientific sense (Albert Einstein is rolling in his E=mc² grave), but TikTok’s tendency to baselessly pathologise human experiences as ‘theories’ has taken a new, somehow even more ridiculous turn in the form of the so-called Septum Ring Theory.
If you’ve encountered this theory and felt the need to permanently log off and go touch grass, you’re not alone. The Septum Ring Theory — which suggests that those with pierced septums share the characteristic of oversharing their traumas online — is a controversial one, not least because it was coined by Torraine Walker, a so-called ‘men’s rights activist’.
Walker first mentioned the theory back in 2017 (per Know Your Meme), claiming that many viral videos calling out misogyny or pushing for progressive ideas were made by women with pierced septums. In 2025, however, the theory has taken on a broader sentiment to posit more generally that those with a woe-is-me attitude (read: snowflakes) will often have a nose ring.
It has the faint whiff of that viral meme a few years back about non-binary people all being baristas with blue hair, or the ongoing meme that any woman who simply must speak to a manager is named Karen. With all of these in mind, I will reiterate that despite the fancy-sounding addition of the word ‘theory’, the Septum Ring discourse is just another stereotype. But this time, dressed as ‘science’.
By Walker’s very dubious logic, I could present my own ‘right wing man theory’: that those complaining about people being ‘woke’ snowflakes are, almost always, right wing men.
Thankfully, in the time since the theory exploded on the FYP, scores of septum-pierced users have hit back at the slander by either offering rebuttals, embracing their ringed noses, or reclaiming the stereotype as a source of pride.
“It’s a piece of metal that I can take out at any time,” one TikToker said in response to those weaponising the theory, “but can you bring back the light into your mother’s eyes?” Other equally triumphant users said they don’t “want a man who cries about a piece of metal”, or posed an alternate theory that “all girls with septum rings are hot”.
Elsewhere, Laura Masia, PEDESTRIAN.TV’s senior entertainment reporter, also stood firm in her decade-long sporting of the septum ring, saying she “liked the alternative edge and image it immediately presented to the world”.
“As a left-leaning, feminist gal, I’m proud to fall into the stereotype,” she said.
While the reclamation is promising to see, the nature of TikTok means the septum ring will undoubtedly be overshadowed by another viral theory soon enough — probably something equally nonsensical and hyper-specific like the Yellow Pillow Theory or the Joey from Friends Theory.
I just made both of those up, but on a wasteland like TikTok, I truly wouldn’t be surprised.
Lead images: TikTok
The post The Septum Ring Theory Has Taken Over TikTok — So Does It Stack Up? appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
