Dubai chocolate is all over the place — and it’s giving TikTok mind rot

[ad_1] A Vox reader asks: Why is Dubai chocolate abruptly all over the place?! My husband and I've seen that we abruptly see it all over the place from small city ice cream retailers, nationwide chains, grocery shops — and it seems to be throughout the nation. Since we're DC folks, our brains instantly went to questioning whether or not there was a particular company or political pressure behind it. Is the UAE authorities selling it? Is there an organization pushing it? Would like to know!

A abruptly ubiquitous delicacy from a futuristic metropolis looks like the topic of a web based conspiracy. That is the thriller that has surrounded Dubai chocolate because it arrived on the worldwide meals scene, exhibiting up in grocery shops like Dealer Joe’s and Costco, in addition to on TikTok, over the previous yr.

When did Dubai grow to be identified for its chocolate? And what makes chocolate “Dubai”? Is that this an export being pushed by the United Arab Emirates? Why is it abruptly accessible close to the checkout at each grocery retailer? Why are folks craving inexperienced, crunchy mush?

Like many blink-and-you-miss-it traits within the period of TikTok, the origins of the Dubai chocolate craze aren’t as mysterious as they could appear. Nonetheless, the sheer demand for a product so excessive in its mixture of substances, advertising and marketing push, and price ticket stays a bit puzzling. That confusion could be what makes it probably the most becoming development for our TikTok-addled age.

The e-newsletter is a part of Vox’s Explain It to Me , the place we deal with a query from our viewers and ship a digestible explainer from considered one of our journalists. Have a query you need us to reply? Ask us here .

The last word TikTok dessert

Dubai chocolate could also be the primary character of 2025, but it surely’s been round for a couple of years now. The bars had been invented in 2021 by Sarah Hamouda , a British Egyptian residing in Dubai, throughout her being pregnant along with her second little one. Her cravings led her to create an indulgent smorgasbord of a snack: a chocolate bar stuffed with pistachio cream; tahini; and her beloved childhood dessert knafeh, which is a conventional Center Jap pastry produced from shredded phyllo, smooth cheese, and date syrup.

In 2021, she launched her firm Repair Dessert Chocolatier, promoting the distinctive chocolate bars below the title “Can’t Get Knafeh of it.” In 2023, the model skilled its preliminary burst of virality after it despatched the bar to some native influencers, together with Ukrainian creator Maria Vehera, who posts mukbang-style content material. In her video, which now has over 100 million views, she cracks open the chocolate bar ASMR-style, exhibiting off its gooey contents and dipping it into much more pistachio filling.

The clip is sort of gross, with Vehera consuming the messy dessert like a toddler. Nonetheless, orders for the chocolate immediately skyrocketed. And types, catching wind of the novelty deal with, rolled out their very own imitations. Swiss chocolatier Lindt sells its personal Dubai- model chocolate bar, made in Germany. The British grocer Lidl launched its personal knockoff in March. Crumbl Cookie, after all, dropped a limited-edition Dubai chocolate brownie in August.

The value level, each for the OG bar and its copycats, is fairly steep as a consequence of costly substances like pistachio and the truth that its manufacturing is so labor-intensive. As Tastewise CEO Alon Chen instructed the Guardian , the bar “can't be made at a big scale” due to the “fragility and crispiness of knafeh,” which requires “loads of expertise on a big manufacturing line” to correctly put together the dessert. A six-pack of large bars from Repair prices $120, and a Lindt bar prices $15.

Nonetheless, for anybody who enjoys the substances that make up Dubai chocolate, it’s a gorgeous product. When you've got a large candy tooth — it’s very candy — it arguably tastes good. But, that solely appears to be a part of the explanation persons are flocking to it.

Professor Sarah Montano, who research retail advertising and marketing on the College of Birmingham, says lots of the client traits we see are pushed by a “desirability to be seen making an attempt or proudly owning the product.” Likewise, half the expertise of Dubai chocolate appears to be possessing and, naturally, posting it. The bar is arguably a sloppy visible and even auditory spectacle, seemingly designed to fulfill mukbang-watchers or anybody who’s stimulated just by a mixture of eye-popping colours and textures. That's to say, it’s superb for the “ brain rot ” web, the place any attention-grabbing but low-quality content material can thrive.

“A part of the enchantment is the character of Dubai chocolate as providing a reveal,” mentioned Bettina Makalintal, a senior reporter at Eater. “The crunchy, colourful inside feels actually excellent for video, as a result of persons are shocked to see what’s inside, and it presents a sort of earlier than and after.”

The deal with has additionally grow to be a stunning standing image. In some ways, the chocolate is luxury-coded. There’s the restricted provide and the costly worth level. There’s a picture of opulent residing within the chocolate’s namesake. Makalintal says the “concept of the chocolate being international and imported provides to the attract,” and its substances do, as properly.

<img alt="A line of customers stands in front of a Lindt store." data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-2184138371.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400"/> Prospects lining as much as purchase Lindt’s Dubai-style chocolate bars in Stuttgart, Germany, on November 15, 2024. Thomas Kienzle/AFP through Getty Pictures

“Pistachios, greater than different widespread nuts, appear to confer a way of luxurious, whereas additionally seeming extra approachable and fascinating than one thing like a macadamia nut,” mentioned Makalintal. “Total, we’ve been seeing the creep of the thought of ‘quiet luxurious’ into groceries and what folks wish to purchase, the rise of the Flamingo Estate model being an instance.”

But, there’s nothing refined or aspirational in regards to the snack that’s primarily junk meals. Whereas the “ quiet luxury”/”old money ” development is outlined by a pure, minimalist look, the Dubai chocolate bar is all about extra and artificiality. It’s an appropriately ostentatious export for a metropolis that foregrounds its wealth, but it surely additionally speaks to the intense nature of every part Gen Z is procuring proper now.

Is Dubai chocolate rotting our brains?

Together with different stylish commodities — like Labubus , matcha lattes , even singer Benson Boone — Dubai chocolate has grow to be the topic of some bizarre memes on TikTok. In some circumstances, customers publish photographs of themselves wanting vacant, even possessed, behind an overlay of buzzword salad. “Dubai chocolate-covered Labubu for dinner with a moonbeam ice cream matcha in a Stanley Cup in Cupertino whereas sporting my Shein hoodie and watching low-exposure slideshows of EOS lotion,” learn one.

These memes appear to be proof and satire of a present mind rot epidemic. I’m not referencing Skibidi Toilet or AI animals with fake Italian names — deliberately created “mind rot” memes which might be fashionable with Gen Alpha. Reasonably, it looks like persons are experiencing a sense of psychological decline by consuming, if not simply being continuously uncovered to, a lot of uncanny and aggressively marketed traits this yr. These memes usually lead with Dubai chocolate, arguably the least acquainted and most random product out of all these examples.

In a chunk for the New Yorker, Kyle Chayka considered Dubai chocolate to be part of a broader phenomenon he labeled the “IRL brainrot aesthetic.” He talked about Labubus; sea moss Erewhon smoothies; and quite a few matcha-colored gadgets, together with the gooey inside of Dubai chocolate. “These merchandise appear to be coalescing now into a brand new temper board of Gen Z-and-younger life-style aspiration, representing a horizon past the arrival of generative A.I., self-importance chemical modification, and digital-first actuality,” he wrote. “The ugliness is a characteristic, not a bug.”

A subset of Dubai chocolate movies on TikTok throws this assertion into sharp reduction. For each video of an influencer effortlessly pulling aside the chocolate bar to disclose a wonderfully slimy substance, you will discover bloopers of customers cracking its shell simply to discover a dry, poop-colored filling or barely any cream at all . With that, the frustration of consuming for consumption’s sake is straight away uncovered.