Within twenty-four hours of Karmelo Anthony's first-degree murder conviction for stabbing seventeen-year-old Austin Metcalf at a Texas track meet, a rap song called "Austin Bop" appeared on Apple Music. Its lyrics celebrate the killing. Its fans are dancing with knives on TikTok, miming the act that ended a teenager's life.
The trend has spread fast. Users post videos of themselves pretending to stab and gag while the track plays, turning a real murder, and a grieving family, into content. One recent clip carried the caption: "Happy Juneteenth to the METCALF family 🥳."
This is what passes for entertainment in certain corners of the internet: a convicted killer's act reimagined as choreography, served up for clicks and likes while the people who loved Austin Metcalf watch it happen in real time.
About a year before the conviction, Karmelo Anthony, now nineteen, stabbed Austin Metcalf in the heart during a fight over a seat under an awning at a track meet in Frisco, Texas. Austin's twin brother, Hunter Metcalf, held him as he bled out. The New York Post reported that Anthony was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.
The Anthony family has vowed to appeal. Supporters raised $625,000 for his legal fees. Some of those supporters characterized the murder charge as racially motivated, a claim that drew its own wave of political commentary, including false jury claims pushed by Rep. Jasmine Crockett after the conviction.
The trial itself drew demonstrators on both sides to the courthouse steps. After the guilty verdict, angry chants, shouting matches, and physical altercations broke out. Two people were arrested, one Anthony supporter and one Metcalf supporter.
"Austin Bop" landed on Apple Music on June 10, one day after the conviction. Its lyrics leave nothing to interpretation: "Austin bop, knife had blood on the tip when he dropped... coughin' up blood, you think he got ebola." The song's creator has not been publicly identified.
A second track, called "Austin Pack," goes further. It references Hunter Metcalf by name: "We smokin' that Austin Pack, b, h, I got a knife get back, b, h, give your brother a heart attack, b, h." These are not abstract provocations. They target a specific family that buried a seventeen-year-old.
The TikTok account @infodaily516 posted a clip about the trend with the caption: "Austin Bop Trend Sparks Outrage for Mocking Teen's Death." The videos show users dancing with knives and pretending to stab themselves while the song plays.
One meme circulating online features a photo of a funeral pavilion with the caption: "Austin wanted a tent...he got one." The "tent" refers to the awning where the fight that killed him began.
The online cruelty is not confined to dance videos and memes. Anthony supporters have "swatted" the Metcalf family's home three times, filing bogus emergency calls designed to send armed police to the door. Three separate incidents, each one a potentially lethal escalation disguised as a prank.
The harassment has run in both directions. Metcalf supporters mailed copies of Austin's obituary to the Anthony home while Karmelo Anthony was under house arrest awaiting trial. Neither side's conduct excuses the other's, but the scale and nature of the attacks differ. Swatting puts lives at immediate physical risk. Mailing an obituary does not.
And no amount of grievance on either side explains or justifies turning a teenager's murder into a TikTok dance.
Not everyone online has joined the trend. An Instagram user posting under the handle @RobintheMartyr, who identified as Black, condemned the videos directly:
"What do you think is behind the mocking and making fun of an innocent person losing their life? Demons. I want no parts of it, and I'm nothing like it."
Some users, however, defended the trend as "fair play," claiming it mirrored similar online trolling directed at other public figures. The Post did not identify those users by name, and the comparison collapses on contact: mocking a political commentator is not the same as choreographing a murder victim's death for laughs.
Austin Metcalf was seventeen. He went to a track meet and did not come home. His twin brother held him while he died. A jury heard the evidence, convicted Karmelo Anthony of first-degree murder, and a judge sentenced him to thirty-five years.
None of that stopped the content machine. Within a day, the killing had a soundtrack. Within weeks, it had choreography. The people making these videos did not know Austin Metcalf. They do not care about the facts of the case or the weight of the verdict. They care about engagement, about the dopamine hit of a viral clip built on someone else's worst day.
The platforms hosting this content bear responsibility too. Apple Music published the song. TikTok hosts the videos. The question of where the line falls between offensive speech and targeted harassment is not new, but the speed and scale at which this content spreads makes the old answers feel inadequate.
Meanwhile, the Metcalf family endures. They buried a son, sat through a trial, watched supporters and opponents clash on courthouse steps, had armed police sent to their door on false pretenses, and now get to see their child's murder performed as a dance on the phones of strangers.
A society that treats a teenager's killing as raw material for content has lost something it cannot download back.