97-Year-Old NYC Diner Still Serves Their Coke the Old Fashioned Way

Submission 23,012

Part of a series on Engagement Bait. [View Related Entries]

About

97-Year-Old NYC Diner Still Serves Their Coke the Old Fashioned Way refers to a video that went viral on Twitter / X multiple times in the 2020s as it was blatantly stolen and reposted by many users over several years, inspiring many to call it "engagement bait." Creators parodied the video in memes, humorously criticizing accounts that kept posting it and the internet users who kept liking it. The snippet was originally posted to TikTok in 2022 by video creator New York Nico who was at the Lexington Candy Shop in New York, New York where they still serve Coca-Cola the "old fashioned way" with a scoop of ice cream. The meme is similar to other engagement bait parodies on Twitter / X like Apple's Best Feature and What Was The Incident At Your High School?

Origin

On August 11th, 2022, TikToker^[1] @newyorknico posted a video with text overlay reading, "97 year old NYC diner still serves their Coke the old fashioned way." The video was taken at Lexington Candy Shop in New York, New York, showing a man filling a vintage Coca-Cola glass with Coke and putting a scoop of vanilla ice cream into it. Over two years, the video received roughly 45.7 million plays and 4.8 million likes (shown below).

Also on August 11th, 2022, @newyorknico posted the video as a Reel on Instagram,^[7] gaining roughly 294,100 likes over the same timeframe.

Spread

The video quickly spread across social media, such as to Reddit's /r/interestingasfuck^[2] on August 12th, 2022, gaining over 59,000 upvotes in two years. On September 20th, 2022, the X^[3] account of @ladbible reposted the video, gaining over 4,900 likes in two years.

Sometime on or before September 24th, 2022, the X^[4] @ContentGoViraI (formerly @InterestingPot) tweeted the video (since deleted). The tweet gained viral quote retweets, like one shared by X^[5]^[6] user @OvOBrezzzy on September 24th, who said, "Y’all forgot the most important ingredient in the old fashioned coke," gaining over 403,000 likes in two years (shown below).

On April 23rd, 2023, the video was reposted by the X^[8] account @InterestingsAsF, gaining over 123,000 likes in 10 months. Similar to the precursor, the tweet gained viral quotes, like one from X^[9] user @Zvbear on April 23rd, gaining over 35,000 likes (shown below, left).

Also on April 23rd, 2023, X^[10] user @OvOBrezzzy posted an almost identical quote retweet to the one he posted a year before, writing, "Y’all are missing the most important ingredient for a old fashioned coke," gaining over 26,000 likes in 10 months (shown below, right).

On November 7th, 2023, the X^[11] account @historyinmemes posted the video, gaining over 189,000 likes in three months.

Thereafter, the video was parodied en masse on Twitter / X, evident in a post shared by X^[12] user @loimfy on December 8th, 2023, who captioned the Muddy Workers Operating Machinery video with the caption, gaining over 680 likes in two months (shown below).

On January 27th, 2024, X^[13] user @blephin_ tweeted the video but changed it akin to the Venus Slime Fields meme, captioned, "97-eons-old slime diner still serves their glorp the old fashioned way," gaining over 52,000 likes in one month (shown below).

Parodies of the tweet continued to surface in 2024, predominantly after the X^[14] account @OJSIMPS0NBURNER posted it on February 21st, 2024, gaining over 8.9 million views and 3,200 likes in one day.