Imagine If Ninja Got A Low Taper Fade — Three-panel meme cover showing Ninja and two portraits of a young man with a low taper fade haircut

Imagine If Ninja Got A Low Taper Fade

2024viral audiodeclining

Published August 12, 2026

"Imagine If Ninja Got A Low Taper Fade" is a viral 2024 TikTok audio pulled from a Twitch freestyle by hyperpop artist ericdoa, in which he sings the title line about Fortnite streamer Ninja. The clip spawned photoshop slideshows, Fortnite skits, and Frank Ocean misattribution jokes before Ninja himself got the haircut on camera days later.

tiktok sound trends streamer memes catchphrase memes fake quote memes slideshow memes

Overview

"Imagine If Ninja Got A Low Taper Fade" is a viral audio clip from hyperpop artist ericdoa, who freestyled the phrase during a January 2024 Twitch stream1. The lyric jokes about giving Fortnite streamer Richard Tyler "Ninja" Blevins a low taper fade haircut, and its dreamy, half-sung delivery made the six-second cut endlessly loopable on TikTok2.

The meme mostly spread through two formats: reaction videos where creators insisted the audio was a lost Frank Ocean track, and slideshows that photoshopped a fresh low taper fade onto Ninja's head2. It reached its peak when Ninja himself walked out of a barbershop with the actual haircut a week later and posted the reveal on his own TikTok2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitch / TikTok (viral spread)
Creator
ericdoa
Date
2024

The audio comes from an ericdoa Twitch livestream on January 5, 2024, during which he freestyled for roughly an hour. The specific "Imagine if Ninja got a low taper fade" line arrives around the 29:26 mark of the stream2. Ericdoa reuploaded the full session to his YouTube channel on January 6, 2024, where the moment appears at the 25:35 mark and pulled in a few thousand early views before it jumped platforms1.

On January 11, 2024, the fan-run @ericdoaclips TikTok account posted a short cut of just the lyric, which reached more than 1.4 million views within a day and turned the throwaway freestyle into a full audio trend2.

How It Spread

Within the same 24-hour window on January 11, TikTok user @aamxrr posted a clip claiming the vocals were actually Frank Ocean, hitting around 240,000 views and seeding the joke that the audio sounded like a lost R&B cut2. Slideshow edits followed almost immediately: @sahhyameiii's carousel of Ninja photos topped 400,000 views, and @.evocator's version with the fade pasted onto Ninja's head crossed 46,000 views the same day2.

On January 12, a Fortnite skit from @latenightgamenight showing an in-game wall reading "Ninja with a low taper fade solves all world problems" hit roughly 679,000 views, and Ninja himself acknowledged the trend with a reaction clip that pulled 212,000 views in under a day2. The payoff came on January 13, 2024, when Ninja posted a TikTok debuting his real-life low taper fade set to ericdoa's audio, which reached 5.4 million views in three days2.

The joke stayed alive well past its initial run. A parody wave called "Tfue high taper fade" went viral in October 2024, and by late 2024 creators were making meta-memes about how "The Low Taper Fade Meme Is Still Massive," quoting Ninja's own bewildered comments about the audio weeks after its peak2. Urban Dictionary also picked up entries riffing on low-taper-fade slang tied to the clip3.

How to Use This Meme

Creators typically pair the ericdoa audio with a slideshow of before/after edits, a Fortnite skit, or a real haircut reveal. The common convention is to point at or lip-sync photos of Ninja as the "low taper fade" line lands, often photoshopping the fresh cut onto Ninja, another streamer, or a friend for the punchline.

Frequently Asked Questions