May 31, 2025
The group has now posted videos showing them activities such as puppy yoga, dance classes, and even Pilates.
Khadim Thiam, 23, and nine other Black New York City college students unexpectedly went viral on TikTok when he posted a video of himself and his friends at a Dunkin Donuts smiling and toasting each other after they ordered matcha green tea for the first time.
According to NBC News, the video, which is 19 seconds long, has been watched by more than 15 million people since it first appeared in early April, but instead of finding a receptive audience, Thiam told the outlet that they found negativity.
“They were saying things like, ‘Oh, why are men this happy to try matcha?’ ‘Oh, men should be in war,’” Thiam recalled.
He continued, “I don’t know why the internet reacted like that. So now I was like, O.K., so y’all don’t want to see us try matcha? We’re going to start trying many other things.”
True to his word, Thiam’s group, One Strong Brotherhood, or OSB for short, has now posted more than 20 videos showing the group doing a variety of activities such as puppy yoga, dance classes, and even Pilates.
According to Danielle Young, who is credited with creating the term “Black Boy Joy,” in 2016 while writing for The Root, OSB’s social media activities are rooted in the memory of Black boys who never got to become Black men, Black boys like Emmett Till, who was lynched in 1955 at the age of 14 by a group of white supremacists in Mississippi.
“It’s so hard to see the OSB guys and not be immediately happy, joyful and smiling,” Young told NBC News. “Thinking of Emmett Till and his story, not even being able to be a young, free Black boy without society claiming him as a threat and needing to be murdered for that. It’s beautiful to see that Black boy joy is timeless, but it’s also hurtful to see that it is considered a thing because of what they’re not supposed to be doing.”
For Thiam and his friends, who all attend Hunter College in Manhattan, Young’s last point is perhaps the most poignant.
“There’s a lot of negative stereotypes and connotations” when it comes to young Black men, Thiam, who is a computer science major and also the son of immigrants from Senegal, told NBC News. “We deserve our credit and our place in society to be considered normal, joyful people.”
Since the original video’s somewhat frosty reception online, Thiam has noticed that the comments section has started to reflect the joyous vibes of their videos.
This was epitomized by a recent trip to a West African cooking class hosted by another New York City content creator, Maye Jolie, where they spent almost three hours learning to make a Malinese dish called nem, a meat and spice filled fritter, which is mixed, rolled, and then fried.
“Hopefully we go global,” Thiam told the outlet, musing about “going to Japan trying to become like a samurai or something, or we’re making tea in China,” after revealing that the group has already secured five-figure brand deals and worked with Doordash and MAC Cosmetics.
Thiam concluded, “I just want to encourage people to try new things. Meet new people, make great connections. Have genuine fun, joyness, and bring energy.”
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