Sporting a white tank top and Hurley ball cap, a content creator who’s gaining widespread popularity has determined just how “shiddy” Missouri is.
On Aug. 18, the TikTok account Shiddy Places shared a video exploring how “shiddy” Missouri is. The state nearly passed with flying colors. As of Friday, the video had 95,900 views.
Each Shiddy Places video features a different city, state or country. Using Google Earth, the content creator behind the account — a middle-aged man who has yet to disclose his name — drops several pins in the designated location, viewing each pin from street view. Based on the surroundings of the dropped pin, he determines if that specific area is “shiddy” or “not shiddy.” Watching a few videos, it’s apparent that he tends to base his decisions on the cleanliness of the area, whether that be the status of nearby buildings, vehicles parked along streets or even people who were captured by the Google Earth camera.
Since the first video posted Aug. 11, Shiddy Places has uploaded more than 80 videos. The content creator has explored nearly all 50 states, India, Dubai, and even more specifically, the Bass Pro Shops in Memphis, Tennessee and La Jolla Mansion in San Diego, California. As of Friday, the TikTok account had 30,500 followers.
Shiddy Places’ most popular video is one exploring Baltimore, which had 720,700 views on Friday. The video gained significant traction after it was shared by Jake Malasek, a content creator for Barstool Sports, on X Tuesday. As of Friday, the post on X had 14.5 million views.
“This guy on TikTok does random drops into cities on Google Maps to see if they’re sh***y and the Baltimore one is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen,” Malasek wrote. Shiddy Places uses Google Earth however, not Google Maps.
Though the creator behind Shiddy Places has yet to say much about himself, a video posted on Aug. 31 reveals a few small details. According to the video, he was born and raised in Kentucky and has two children: ages 4 and 20. The News-Leader attempted to reach the content creator but was unsuccessful in doing so by press deadline.
“I’ve lived in quite a few shiddy places myself, though. Here’s just a couple of them, man, just so you can have an idea of why I get to say things are shiddy,” the user said, showing off a few different neighborhoods in the video. “I’ve lived in shiddy places. I get it, man. It’s tough. It’s not fun for any of us.”
What does the Shiddy Places TikTok have to say about Missouri?
The first pin dropped in the Shiddy Places Missouri video is at the Lost Valley Hatchery in Warsaw. Looking at the area from the street view on Google Earth, viewers may spot a building, large parking lot, water in the distance and a plaque for the late Dave Waller, a manager of the fish hatchery. The location is deemed “not shiddy.”
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The second pin is dropped in Springfield, at the intersection of North Fort Avenue and West Florida Street in the Woodland Heights neighborhood. With what appears some hesitation, the creator labels the area “not shiddy.”
As for other “not shiddy” spots in Missouri, viewers get a snippet of (in order of appearance):
Throughout the video, the content creator comments on the number of rivers and car shops he lands around.
“A lot of nature in Missouri. I’m surprised,” he says after dropping a pin at the Reifsnider State Forest Shooting Range.
He later adds: “You guys seem to have car troubles a lot,” after dropping a pin in the Kansas City auto shop.
The video ends, however, with one “shiddy” location: Joplin. The street view pin appears to have been captured from atop a vehicle in a back alleyway.
“Oh, it’s shiddy,” the creator says, before the video ends.
Greta Cross is the trending topics reporter for the Springfield News-Leader. She has more than five years of journalism experience covering everything from Ozarks history to Springfield’s LGBTQIA+ community. Follow her on X and Instagram @gretalcross. Story idea? Email her at gcross@news-leader.com.