If you have scrolled on TikTok recently, it's likely that you have come across some seriously peculiar-looking food videos. No, these aren't your run-of-the-mill meal prep recipes or viral celebrity hacks; these posts have something innately sensual about them. Most feature a scantily clad, attractive host playing with messy-looking food, whether that's syrup, whipped cream, icing topped with sprinkles, soup or spaghetti. Sometimes it isn't about the act alone but the shape of the foodthat gives it away; a particularly phallic-looking sausage roll being inserted through a heavily iced doughnut is a common example.

Every so often, viewers catch themselves rewatching these videos on loop hoping to uncover the element that stirs discomfort or even intrigue. TikTok account @putinuuis popular for creating such videos; in one we see Barbie submergedin a sea of different coloured icings placed atop a multi-tiered cake. The creator of the viral nine-part video repeatedly emphasises on words like "ooze," "push," "spread," and "lift," building a frustratingly-long tension up to the point when he finally "releases" the messy liquids onto the cake. 

In another video, a woman dressed in hot pink shorts attempts to remove her inner thigh tattoo by smashing a bananaall over it – we realise how ludicrous this sounds, but the 120,000 views (and counting!) make us pause and take a second look. The POV-camera angles, slow sultry moans, and suggestive hand actions appear so much like porn but without any explicit nudity – it's confusing and kind of silly. Or is it? Welcome to the world of sploshing, a fetish where people find sexual gratification from interacting with food or watching others do the same. 

What's sploshing, and why are some people into it?

For some, this means getting off by watching videos of people smash cakein each other's faces but never actually getting down and dirty themselves. For others, it's the feeling of having something wet, warm and drippycourse over their body that turns them on. Sploshing is a subset of a larger fet community called wet and messy(WAM) where people indulge with non-food substances like mud, slime and gunge as well. On TikTok, the hashtag #sploshinghas over 7 million views while thousands of posts–like the @putinuu ones–go untagged to skirt through the app's sex-repressive shadow banning policies. 

The sploshing community is just as active on other social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Redditwhere creators post videos of being smashed in the face with pies, for example, and even take custom requests. While the fetish is gaining steam on TikTok only recently, it has existed in popular media and IRL for decades, perhaps even longer. Just take a look at the slapstick comedy that dominated the '60s,Laurel and Hardy, I Love Lucyand probably the best known, The Three Stooges – they all showed the actors getting pied in the face as a way to playfully humiliate one another. 

"My earliest memory of seeing soft sploshing comes from watching Bozo The Clownand then Nickelodeon's comedy You Can't Do That On Television," says Creamy, a professional WAMmerwho believes sploshing is her sexuality not just a fetish. As a young adult, the creator was bullied and sexually abused, which closed her off to intimacy for years. In her early thirties, Creamy had a series of dreams that climaxed with someone throwing pie on her or her falling into a giant cake. At this point, the creator would wake up orgasming in bed, only to swiftly be enveloped by self-conscious disgust. 

"I tried really hard to stop these fantasies. On my 33rd birthday, my ex-husband gifted me a cake that was covered in rich cream. I finally caved in–I took a big slice to my room, laid a towel on my bed, sat in front of the mirror and began masturbating," she says, tearing up, "Before I knew it, I was smashing the cake all over my face and my body, and that was the best orgasm I ever had." This opened the flood gates to a whole new sexual expression for Creamy; she joined the Ultimate Wet and Messy Directory (UMD)and became a creator, interacting and even educating thousands of newbies. 

For Creamy, finding pleasure in sploshing is directly related to the humiliation embedded in it. She always saw the "attractive woman on television get pied to be put in her place" and that resonated with her. "It's like catharsis; by choosing to get pleasure from humiliation, I am taking back my power from every time I was abused. I am the one in control, and it is based on my consent," she emphasises. 

Dr. Jess O’Reilly, a sexologist and the host of podcast @SexWithDrJessreiterates this sentiment: "You can re-script experiences that are often laden in shame into experiences that produce pleasure. For some people [sploshing] can be highly erotic and for others, it can be a process of healing."

Clix – a photographer who runs Messy Hot, a WAM platform that takes custom requests from fetishists globally – explains that the most common theme hinges on revenge and humiliation. Viewers pay as much as $1500 for a 15 minute video where sploshers recreate game shows and are wedgied with cake or slammed down with syrup as punishment. Another section of the community is drawn to the messy food play for its silliness and texture. Larz, 26, creates WAM content for TikTok and OnlyFans but also has a private slime room with her partner. 

Every few days, the couple dress up in costume, blast music and play together in their sex room pouring syrup and sprinkles on each other or bathing in slime. "I love losing myself in the play, for a few hours the outside world doesn't exist, and it's just him and I being intimate with each other – it doesn't even lead to sex every time," Larz says. The creator is also attracted to sploshing because being covered in a liquid substance reminds her of bodily fluids like cum, which in turn elevates the sexual experience. 

Kink educator Aoife Murraytraces the fetish back to our childhood as well. "We’re always told to eat properly and have impeccable table manners. Sploshing becomes a fun sexual way to rebel against society by being messy," she says. 

But as most things that become hot on the internet, sploshing is also raking in polarising responses bathed in plain old online hate. Many TikTok videos are spammed with comments calling the community "disgusting" and shaming it for wasting food. At a time when any and all sexual content remains taboo, a fetish that involves sexualising cake and pies is bound to shock people. O’Reilly believes self-reflection is essential in breaking away from judgement, and subsequently destigmatising the practice. 

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"If you find yourself judging WAM play, stop and consider what you’re feeling. Do you feel shame? Do you feel excitement? Oftentimes judgement is tied to repression — do you wish you could let loose or lose control over something that’s holding you back?" she asks, adding that people are allowed to not be into fetishes, but should still be able to appreciate why someone else may be. 

Besides TikTok's anti-fetish algorithm, the hate could be another reason why creators don't tie their videos back to the WAM community. However, this leads to the question of third party consent – most people stumble upon sploshing in between their daily scrolls, unaware that they are consuming sexual content. But on the other hand, if creators add fetish disclaimers, it is likely that social media apps would take down their videos, forcing them to stay on overtly sexual platforms like OnlyFans or Clips For Sale. This not only limits expression but also keeps the fet community shielded from the normality of mainstream content, only stigmatising it further. 

Ayesha Hussain, a sex coach based in Los Angeles, believes this prohibitionary approach lacks nuance in tackling awareness and consent. "Different people find different things erotic. If you go down that road you start to limit creative expression, because what counts as a fetish depends on the viewer and not merely the creator," she says, explaining that messy food videos are just that for some people and a path to pleasure for others. Larz too, stands by this in saying that she doesn't create TikToks to turn people on or find clients but just to express herself and have fun online. 

While some preferences sexualise races or identities and place communities at risk by appropriating their culture, sploshing is a soft fetish that is mostly harmless in its expression. Undoubtedly, some viewers may be momentarily perturbed or conflicted by videos of cake smashing and slime bathing, but oh well, they can just as easily swipe away from the content letting TikTok know of their disinterest. Just this simple act makes space for an entire community to exist, thrive and of course, get off. 

As kink consultant Mistress Kyeexplains, "In sploshing, we're marrying aesthetically pleasing elements together, it can be viewed almost as art with the human body being the canvas. In every society we elevate beauty. It seems natural that our sexuality would lean into painting the human body with food that's beautiful to the beholder."