Three-panel collage of TikTok videos referencing Toronto's balling up rules, showing a shocked man, a woman speaking, and a man gesturing with his hands.

Balling Up Rules

2022viral videodeclining

Published October 30, 2026

Balling Up Rules, also known as In Toronto We Literally Have Balling Up Rules, is a viral TikTok video from May 2022 in which a Toronto woman recites her city's unwritten rules for sharing a joint, delivered in heavy local slang drawn from Jamaican patois. The clip gathered over 1.2 million views in its first month and sparked stitch reactions, lip dubs and copycat spam comments on TikTok through June 2022.

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Overview

The monologue lays out specific smoking etiquette: refusing a spliff that is 'ita' (burned down to nothing), not sharing with anyone who did not bring their own, rejecting splizzies or blizzies with filters, and turning down Grabba that smells off2. The delivery, a brisk Toronto accent packed with Jamaican patois vocabulary like 'ting,' 'link up,' 'splizzy' and 'grabba,' became the real draw for viewers reacting to the audio1.

Viewers reposted the clip, stitched it with their own commentary and lip synced to the sound. The phrase 'in Toronto we literally have balling up rules' also became a template for jokes about other cities, and the exact wording turned into a spam comment on TikTok posts about Toronto4.

Origin & Background

Platform
TikTok (viral spread)
Creator
@theofficialplushh
Date
2022

Urban Dictionary defined 'balling up' as 'what you say when you're smoking weed or getting high' on June 9, 2020, with an earlier 2018 entry calling it 'a Toronto slang word for smoking marijuana'2. On May 15, 2022, TikToker @theofficialplushh posted the video captioned 'Toronto literally has balling up rules,' explaining the city's smoking etiquette in Toronto slang3. The upload gained over 1.2 million views within a month4.

How It Spread

On May 24, 2022, Toronto Instagram page 6ixbuzztv reposted the clip, where it got over 330,000 views and 8,400 likes in two weeks5. The original TikTok audio spread as a sound clip through late May and June 2022, feeding both lip dubs and stitch reactions.

TikToker @martinangeltv posted a stitch on May 28, 2022, saying Torontonians who talk like the original creator make other Torontonians want to kill themselves, and the stitch gathered over 980,000 views in two weeks6. On June 2, @sspyne lip dubbed the audio and got over 260,000 views in a week7. On June 8, @toksade used the sound for a shocked reaction captioned 'Me when the spilff is ita' and got over 193,000 views in two days8.

Jokes with the 'in Toronto we literally have balling up rules' template also moved to Twitter. On June 9, 2022, Twitter user @brendan905 tweeted 'if you're from toronto don't read this because you'll just end up moving here / in hamilton we literally don't have balling up rules,' flipping the phrasing for Hamilton, Ontario9.

Timeline

2020-06-09

Urban Dictionary updates its definition of 'balling up' to 'what you say when you're smoking weed or getting high.'

2022-05-15

@theofficialplushh posts the original Balling Up Rules video to TikTok.

2022-05-24

Toronto Instagram page 6ixbuzztv reposts the clip, where it gets over 330,000 views in two weeks.

2022-05-28

@martinangeltv posts a stitch reacting to Toronto accents like the original creator's.

2022-06-02

@sspyne posts a lip dub of the audio.

2022-06-08

@toksade posts a 'me when the spilff is ita' reaction video to the sound.

2022-06-09

Twitter user @brendan905 uses the catchphrase for a Hamilton, Ontario comparison joke.

How to Use This Meme

Users typically remix the format in two ways. One is lip syncing or stitching the original audio to react to the delivery or riff on a specific rule, often the 'if the spliff is ita' line8. The other is quoting the catchphrase 'in [city] we literally have balling up rules' to compare another place's slang or weed etiquette to Toronto's9.

Frequently Asked Questions