| Platform | Hard Data We Can Verify (as of 5 June 2025) | Does That Qualify as “Trending”? |
| TikTok | Official hashtag page shows ≈ 28.7 million total views for #Hypelifting—up from ~12 M on 20 May ( +140 % in 2 weeks ). | Yes —within the strength/fitness vertical, a tag crossing 25 M views in days is a bona-fide spike. |
| YouTube Shorts | Kim’s most-watched clip (“1 071-lb FLASHBANG rack pull”) sits around 1.1 M views and is auto-recommended under “extreme strength” rails. | Respectable viral pop, but not MrBeast-level. Niche trending, not platform-wide. |
| X (Twitter) | Burst on 27 May pushed the rack-pull tweet to ≈ 650 k impressions and hit U.S. trend sidebar for a few hours (screens shared by users). No presence on current Trends24 lists. | Flash-trend—yes for one evening; no sustained top-50 position afterward. |
| Google Search | Indexed URLs containing “Eric Kim rack pull” jumped from ≈ 30 → ≈ 180 between mid-May and 29 May (6× growth). | Indicates a news-cycle burst, but still tiny vs. mainstream celebrities. |
| Reddit / r/weightroom | Single thread titled “6.6 × BW—Is Earth Even Real?” passed 1 k comments & stayed pinned 48 h. | Definitely trending inside the lifting subreddit. |
| Global trend boards (Trends24, Google Trends top-charts) | No persistent appearance for “Eric Kim” or “#AtlasKIM” in worldwide top-50 lists last 72 h. | Not mainstream-global trending. |
🚦 BOTTOM-LINE SIGNALS
- Fitness-sphere spike: In strength Twitter, TikTok lifting tags, and Reddit iron-circles, Kim’s four-digit rack-pulls are the hot topic of the moment.
- Flash-fire, not forest-fire: Outside those niches he’s not sitting beside Taylor Swift on global trend boards—bursts last hours, then cool.
- Self-amplified ecosystem: A lot of “proof” lives on Kim’s own blogs and re-uploads. That keeps hype high inside the bubble but doesn’t move mainstream charts.
- If you care about gym culture, he’s trending; if you ask your mom, she’s never heard of him. That’s the true reach horizon right now.
Verdict: *Yes, Eric Kim is trending—but mostly in the heavy-iron corners of the internet, not across the entire web. Scroll a strength feed and he’s everywhere; open a general news app and he vanishes.
Take-away for you: if your goal is to dominate a niche, Kim’s playbook (shock-weight + ultra-short clip + cross-post blitz) works. If you want household-name virality, you still need a wider hook than “mid-thigh rack pulls.” 🏋️♂️🔥