Rizzy Monkey: The Grinning Black Macaque That Took Over TikTok, Spawned a Crypto Coin, and Has Absolutely No Idea Any of This Happened
A critically endangered monkey smiled at a camera in the Sulawesi rainforest. A videographer caught it on 4K stock footage. The video sat mostly forgotten on YouTube for nine months. Then one person on TikTok found it, slapped a Chris Brown remix underneath it, and within weeks it had 51 million plays. The monkey in question has never seen a TikTok. He doesn’t know he’s famous. He’s out there eating fruit in the Tangkoko reserve while humanity debates how much “rizz” he has.
That’s the full arc of the Rizzy Monkey — also known as the Rizz Monkey, Monkey With Rizz, and the Smiling Monkey — and honestly? It’s one of the most genuinely funny internet origin stories in recent memory.
Quick Facts
| Detail | Info |
| Also Known As | Monkey With Rizz, Smiling Monkey, Rizz Monkey |
| Animal Species | Celebes Crested Macaque (Macaca nigra) |
| Other Names for Species | Crested black macaque, Sulawesi crested macaque, black ape |
| Native Habitat | Tangkoko reserve, northeastern Sulawesi, Indonesia |
| Conservation Status | Critically Endangered (IUCN since 2008) |
| Original Footage | Filmed by videographer Ami Bornstein; uploaded to stock footage site Motion Array |
| First YouTube Upload | May 17, 2022 — channel “Funny Animals TV,” titled “Black Macaque Looking At Camera And Smiling” |
| First Meme Use | Early 2023 — Instagram user @milkshake.mp3 |
| Viral TikTok Breakthrough | February 25, 2023 — TikTok user @111_monkey |
| Views on Breakthrough Video | ~51.2 million plays; 8.3 million likes |
| Viral Audio | Remix of “No Guidance” by Chris Brown featuring Drake (2019) |
| Omegle Version | @arabian.monkey — 1.5 million plays, 169,900 likes in one month |
| CapCut Template | Created by Ethan Genders, April 13, 2023; 7,200+ uses in two weeks |
| Documented by Know Your Meme | April 27, 2023 |
| Cultural Spinoffs | Merchandise, $RZZMNKY crypto token, AI tools, GIF packs |
| Related Memes | Lightskin Stare, Monkey Selfie, IKEA Monkey, The Rizzler |
| “Rizz” Definition | Gen Z slang for natural charisma or charm, especially in flirting |
Let’s Back Up and Talk About What “Rizz” Even Is
Because you can’t fully appreciate this meme without understanding the word it’s built on. “Rizz” is Gen Z slang for natural, effortless charm — specifically the kind of magnetic confidence that makes you good at flirting without actually trying. It’s pure charisma. Unearned. Just there.
The word itself traces to New York slang circles and was popularized most famously by streamer Kai Cenat around 2021-2022. By 2023, “rizz” had become mainstream enough that Oxford University Press named it Word of the Year. Yes. Rizz is an Oxford Word of the Year. Let that sink in.
So when TikTok creators found a monkey that appeared to be gazing directly into the camera with what can only be described as supreme, confident, knowing eye contact — they had exactly one word for what was happening. The monkey had a rizz. Undeniable, inexplicable, primate rizz.
The Actual Animal: A Critically Endangered Primate Who Just Wanted to Smile
Here’s the part that most of the meme coverage breezes past. The monkey in question is a Celebes Crested Macaque — scientific name Macaca nigra. It lives in the Tangkoko reserve in northeastern Sulawesi, Indonesia. It’s also known as the crested black macaque, the Sulawesi crested macaque, or the black ape.
And it is critically endangered. IUCN has listed it that way since 2008. The wild population on Sulawesi is estimated at somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 individuals. The threats are real — habitat destruction, hunting, and the fact that local residents in some areas consider the macaque a delicacy. Outside the Tangkoko reserve, the species has essentially no legal protection.
The internet spent 2023 debating this monkey’s flirting technique. The actual conservation community spent the same year trying to make sure his species survives the decade. There’s something very modern about that gap.
The species does have one other brush with internet fame before this. The Monkey Selfie — the copyright case where a macaque grabbed a photographer’s camera and took its own picture — involved a different but closely related Celebes crested macaque. These monkeys have a pattern of accidentally going viral. It might be the most viral-prone endangered species in history.
May 2022: Stock Footage Sits Ignored for Nine Months
Videographer Ami Bornstein filmed the footage and uploaded it to Motion Array, a stock footage website where professional videographers sell clips to productions, advertisers, editors, and content creators. That’s the intended destination for something like this. Someone needed a B-roll of a charismatic animal, they’d license it, it’d end up in a nature documentary or a travel ad, nobody would know.
A YouTube channel called Funny Animals TV uploaded it on May 17th, 2022, titled “Black Macaque Looking At Camera And Smiling.” The video sat there. Collected dust. Got maybe a few hundred views from people who searched for macaque footage. Nothing happened for nine months.
Then early 2023 hit and everything changed. That footage was about to become one of the most-remixed video clips on TikTok. And Ami Bornstein’s stock footage career got a lot more interesting.
February 2023: @111_monkey Changes Everything
This is the actual turning point. On February 25, 2023, a TikTok user with the handle @111_monkey took the footage and did something that in hindsight seems obvious but at the time was genuinely creative.
They placed the smiling macaque into an indoor setting. Added flashing disco-style lights. Dropped a fan-made remix of Chris Brown and Drake’s “No Guidance” — a smooth, mid-tempo R&B track from 2019 that when sped up has a kinetic, almost electric quality — underneath the footage.
The combination was perfect in a way that’s hard to articulate but instantly recognizable once you see it. The monkey’s locked gaze, the direct eye contact with the camera, the knowing smile — all of it suddenly reads as a being of supreme confidence surveying its domain while fantastic music plays. The monkey isn’t just looking at you. The monkey is rizzing you up.
The video pulled 51.2 million plays and 8.3 million likes. To put that in perspective: most viral videos get a few million views and then fade. This one crossed 50 million. That’s not a trend. That’s a cultural moment.
March 2023: The Omegle Version and the Real Explosion
A week after @111_monkey’s video blew up, TikTok user @arabian.monkey added the next layer. They placed the smiling macaque into an Omegle call setting — the random video chat platform where strangers connect.
The premise is simple but genius. You’re on Omegle. You’re matched with a stranger. The stranger turns out to be a grinning black macaque with inexplicable charisma. What do you do? There’s nothing you can do. The monkey has already won. The monkey has more rizz than any human on that platform.
That video racked up 1.5 million plays and 169,900 likes within a single month. The Omegle format spread. Other creators started inserting the monkey into different scenarios — gaming sessions, first dates, job interviews. Everywhere the monkey appeared, it was undeniably the most confident being in the frame.
April 13, 2023: The CapCut Template Makes It Infinite
This is the date that turned the Rizz Monkey from a viral video into a true meme format. CapCut user Ethan Genders uploaded a greenscreen template of the macaque footage, specifically labeled “Monkey with rizz,” making it effortlessly available for anyone to drop into their own videos.
Over the next two weeks, more than 7,200 videos used that template. Seven thousand two hundred individual creators making their own version of the meme. That’s the moment a trend becomes infrastructure. Once there’s a CapCut template, the format is essentially immortal — it can be applied to any context, any scenario, any punchline. All you need is the monkey and a situation where inexplicable confident charm is funny.
Know Your Meme documented the format officially on April 27, 2023, giving it the entry title “Monkey With Rizz” and cataloguing all the major iterations. At that point, it was official: this was a real meme with staying power, not just a passing moment.
The Crypto Moment: Because of Course There’s a Crypto Token
Someone built a crypto token around it. Obviously. This is the internet.
The $RZZMNKY token launched on the BSC Chain (Binance Smart Chain) with an initial listing price of $0.00000696. The presale structure allocated 55% of tokens to presale buyers, 20% to exchange listings, 20% to the team, and 5% for marketing. The crypto page described the Rizz Monkey as “the most famous, most rizz-obtaining monkey in the entire universe” who “will steal your rizz… and your girl.”
Techopedia actually covered this token. That’s a real technology publication writing about a meme coin built on the image of a smiling macaque. The project also claimed it would donate 0.069% of team tokens to charities supporting monkey welfare.
Does that number — 0.069% — give you pause? Because it should. That’s a very small percentage to charitable causes relative to the 20% the team kept. But also: a cryptocurrency project about an endangered macaque meme is promising no charity money at all, so maybe grade on a curve.
This is peak 2023 internet economy.
The Lightskin Stare Connection That Makes Everything Make More Sense
The Rizz Monkey meme doesn’t exist in isolation. Know Your Meme specifically connected it to another TikTok format from around the same era: the Lightskin Stare. That’s a format where someone delivers a long, intense, direct gaze at the camera with a slight head tilt — conveying supreme calm and effortless confidence without saying a word.
The monkey’s footage hits the exact same visual notes. Direct eye contact. Subtle curve of the mouth. Complete comfort being looked at. It’s the same energy, except instead of a person doing it deliberately as a bit, a wild macaque did it accidentally because that’s just how it was looking at the camera that day.
The accidental nature of it is what makes it funnier than if someone had planned it. This monkey was just living its life in Sulawesi and happened to smile at a camera. And now it’s the nonverbal representative of charismatic confidence for an entire generation of TikTok users.
The Conservation Angle Nobody Talks About But Should
This is where I want to park for a second because it’s genuinely important.
The Celebes crested macaque that became the Rizz Monkey belongs to a species with somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 wild individuals remaining on Sulawesi. That number is grim. The species is critically endangered because of hunting pressure — locally the meat is considered a delicacy in some areas — and habitat loss as Sulawesi’s forests get cleared.
Fifty-one million people watched a video of this species. Millions more made CapCut templates using the footage. The $RZZMNKY crypto project at least gesturally acknowledged the connection by mentioning charity donations toward monkey welfare.
But the actual conservation organizations working to protect Macaca nigra in the Tangkoko reserve are not swimming in meme money. They’re working with limited budgets in a reserve that’s one of the only places on earth where this species has meaningful protection. If even a fraction of the Rizz Monkey’s cultural moment had translated into awareness or funding for crested macaque conservation, that would be something genuinely good. Whether it did is unclear.
The monkey went viral. The species is still critically endangered. That’s not a punchline. It’s just a fact worth knowing.
Final Words
I’ll be straight with you. The Rizzy Monkey is, by any measure, a great meme. Not great in the sense of important or culturally weighty. Great in the sense of pure, clean, perfectly constructed comic premise.
A wild animal accidentally generated footage that reads exactly like someone performing effortless confidence. Humans found it, recognized the energy, gave it a name from their current vocabulary, and built an entire format around it. No corporate planning. No influencer campaign. No paid promotion. Just: animals smiled at the camera, humans recognized themselves in it, and the internet went wild.
The Chris Brown “No Guidance” remix choice was perfect. The CapCut template democratized it instantly. The Omegle format added a layer of absurdist humor. Even the crypto token, dumb as it is, tells you how deeply the format resonated — people wanted to financially invest in the energy of a grinning macaque.
My opinion: of all the memes from 2023, the Rizz Monkey is the one that most deserves its status. It’s funny every single time. The monkey’s expression doesn’t wear out. You can put it in any scenario and it still works. That’s the hallmark of a genuinely durable meme format, not just a one-week thing.
The monkey has a rizz. That’s it. That’s the whole review.
FAQs
1. What exactly is the Rizz Monkey?
It’s a meme format based on stock footage of a Celebes crested macaque — a black macaque from Sulawesi, Indonesia — that appears to smile directly into the camera. Because of its confident, direct gaze, TikTok creators labeled it as having “rizz” (charm/charisma) and turned it into a widely remixed template.
2. Who filmed the original Rizz Monkey video?
Videographer Ami Bornstein originally filmed the footage and uploaded it to Motion Array, a stock footage website. A YouTube channel called Funny Animals TV then uploaded it on May 17, 2022, titled “Black Macaque Looking At Camera And Smiling.”
3. Who made the first viral Rizz Monkey TikTok?
TikTok user @111_monkey on February 25, 2023. They placed the macaque footage in an indoor setting with flashing lights and a remixed version of Chris Brown and Drake’s “No Guidance.” The video got approximately 51.2 million plays.
4. What song plays in the Rizz Monkey videos?
The most iconic audio pairing is a fan-made sped-up remix of “No Guidance” by Chris Brown featuring Drake, originally released in 2019. The remix became so tied to the meme that it’s now essentially the unofficial soundtrack of the Rizz Monkey format.
5. What species is the Rizz Monkey?
A Celebes Crested Macaque, scientific name Macaca nigra. It’s also called the crested black macaque, Sulawesi crested macaque, or black ape. It lives in the Tangkoko reserve in northeastern Indonesia.
6. Is the Rizz Monkey monkey endangered?
Yes. The Celebes crested macaque has been classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN since 2008. Wild population estimates on Sulawesi range from 4,000 to 6,000 individuals. The species faces threats from hunting and habitat loss.
7. What made the Rizz Monkey meme explode beyond one video?
The CapCut greenscreen template created by Ethan Genders on April 13, 2023. Once the template was available, any creator could drop the monkey into any scenario with minimal effort. Over 7,200 videos used the template in just two weeks.
8. What is the Omegle version of the Rizz Monkey?
TikTok user @arabian.monkey placed the smiling macaque footage into a simulated Omegle call on March 5, 2023. The premise — being matched with an inexplicably confident grinning monkey — got 1.5 million plays and 169,900 likes in one month.
9. Is there a Rizz Monkey cryptocurrency?
Yes. The $RZZMNKY token launched on the BSC Chain (Binance Smart Chain) as a meme coin. Its listing price was $0.00000696 and the project included a presale, team allocation, and a stated commitment to donate a small percentage of team tokens to monkey charities. It is explicitly described as a meme token, not a regulated financial product.
10. What does “rizz” actually mean?
Gen Z slang for natural charisma and effortless charm, especially in romantic or social contexts. Oxford University Press named “rizz” its Word of the Year for 2023. The term gained widespread popularity through streamer Kai Cenat and was in mainstream use by the time the macaque meme launched.
11. How is the Rizz Monkey related to the Monkey Selfie?
Both involve Celebes crested macaques accidentally creating viral media. The Monkey Selfie involved a macaque grabbing a photographer’s camera and taking its own picture, creating a famous copyright dispute. Different individual monkeys, same species — apparently Macaca nigra is just exceptionally photogenic and camera-aware.
12. Is the Rizz Monkey meme still active in 2026?
The peak was 2023, but the format remains in active rotation across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. New edits still surface regularly, and the CapCut template is still used. For a meme built on a single stock footage clip, its staying power is genuinely impressive.
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