The world is a sick, cruel place. For some reason, Howie Mandel—Howie Mandel, of all people, for Chrissakes!—has to make it worse. Howie, can we please have peace in the world? Please?
The man has taken a liking to TikTok, which has primarily been a space for youngsters to joke around about corn and other popular trends. In my case, I use the app to find recipes and watch dogs go on playdates. But America’s Got Talent judge Howie Mandel has worked his way into my algorithm time and time again, and I’m starting to get really tired of his shenanigans.
TikTok is full of complete and utter wackiness (hence its popularity), and celebs are often forced to post promotional materials for their shows, films, and other projects. But Howie is never posting promotional material. In fact, he’s often posting demotional content—videos that make viewers gasp, block, and report him. Videos that have no rhyme or reason. Videos that not only turn your stomach inside out, but also make the organ exit your body with a suitcase, parting ways with your soul forever.
Before we get gross (I apologize in advance; this article will get so gross), let’s begin with the ferocity of Howie’s TikToking. He uploads videos between three and five times per day on average. Though they’re all short, none stretching longer than a minute, how can anyone have five thoughts they have to share with the entire world—he has over 10 million followers—in the span of 24 hours?
Posting this much on TikTok should be a crime. Especially when we look at the content, which is made up of some of the worst images that have ever lived inside my brain. Brace yourself. There’s no way to prepare anyone for the horrors that live on Howie Mandel’s TikTok.
Like a middle-aged mother on Facebook, Howie is brought to the strangest content lurking on the darkened corners of the internet. Moms always find the blurriest, most generic memes—usually featuring minions, usually about wine. On the flip side, Howie Mandel always finds the slimiest, most jaw-dropping videos on TikTok—usually featuring fish, and usually sporting a bizarre filter while he talks about them.
After this piece is posted, Howie will likely have updated his TikTok with three new videos, each more heinous than the last. But allow me to tease a bit of his offerings. Recently, Howie made it to my home page for a video of one fish sticking its tongue into another fish’s wet, slimy mouth. “This is what life was like before COVID,” Howie narrates. “You can’t do any of this anymore. Remember?”
No, Howie. I don’t remember. He is an avid user of the TikTok filter: In one, he poses as a bee with the caption “#bee #your #self.” In another, he makes his face look like a rat. He uses one filter to make it look like a mouth is licking his face on a lollipop. What is going on? There are endless filter videos, and surely, more are on the way.
But Howie really strikes gold when he duets random videos. Howie seems to find the most obscure clips from the worst parts of TikTok: popping brown liquid that looks like diarrhea, a “tummy dragon” that eats a little boy’s eye out, and a baby burping tutorial, which he goes so far as to imitate, barfing up water into his sink.
My personal favorite is his commentary on what appears to be Civil War-themed pornography: “If anyone knows their history, this is from the Civil War. Neat history.”
Mind you, Howie has a wife, children, and grandchildren. In fact, he features his family on his page, where he also posts nasty, explicit content in every other video. Can’t he hang out with them instead? There’s nothing wrong with uploading a nice, simple TikTok dance video with your daughter. Alas, Howie has no time for his family. He’s got to churn out content on his TikTok of course: “Not now, sweetie, Howie’s got to film a video about a pastry that looks like male genitalia.”
So, the question becomes: What is Howie Mandel doing with his life at the moment? Apart from gearing up for the release of his animated film Pierre the Pigeon-Hawk, in which he stars as “a dreamer pigeon” alongside Whoopi Goldberg’s “rebel hawk,” he’s not really doing all that much outside of his TikTok. He’s been hosting shows like America’s Got Talent and did one season of Bullsh*t the Game Show. He has a podcast with his daughter. And he films so, so many TikToks.
After swearing my allegiance to the wonderful Deal or No Deal host in my early days, I now have a completely different view of the man. Howie, the man who said “Open the case” so brilliantly, who picked up phone calls from the banker with such ease, who delighted us with family interviews and audience quips—he’s not the man he once was.
I’m not the only one frustrated here. Plenty of others who see his TikToks virtually shake their heads in despair, confused by his berserk posts. In any given video, you’ll see a comment that reads something like, “We won’t forget Howie” or “You still haven’t apologized for July 9, Howie.” Ominous. That’s because on July 9, 2022, Howie Mandel’s TikTok changed the world.
“Brace yourself” has already worked its way into this article once, and I’m going to say it again: Brace yourself. And I mean it this time. This July 9 story is no joke. You’ve been warned.
The first mention I saw of Howie’s TikTok that broke the internet was through another TikToker, who posted a video with a caption along the lines of, “Oh, I wonder what my favorite reality host Howie Mandel is up to these days,” followed by a petrified wincing face. Hm, I thought to myself, I do wonder what he’s up to.
The TikTok had been deleted from his page; so, using my best investigative journalism skills, I opened up Twitter and searched “Howie Mandel.” Big. Mistake. Everyone was talking about Howie. He had just posted the most violently disgusting, shocking, revealing video the world had seen in a while.
I won’t type what I saw. I will, however, link to these tweets from the day it happened, and leave you to go on your own hunt—if you dare. (Yes, the video is still up on Twitter.)
There you have it, folks. TikTok’s biggest asshole: Howie Mandel. And yet, I haven’t blocked Howie yet, and I’ve watched so many of his TikToks preparing to write this article that he’s now frequently landing on my home page. As horrendous as it is, there’s still something grotesquely appealing about Howie’s TikTok. It’s like watching pimple-popping videos or Emily in Paris: If you’re like me, you won’t be able to take your eyes off the screen.
