Will wonders never cease? It seems that Royal Caribbean’s nine-month-long Ultimate World Cruise has become a social media sensation since it set out from Miami on December 10, sailing with 700 guests aboard Serenade of the Seas.

Move over, ‘Below Deck’ and ‘The Love Boat’—television shows about life on the high seas are evidently being replaced with social media streams created by real-life passengers aboard a real-world cruise.

And, just like ‘The Real World’ and its reality-show ilk, the audience’s fascination is not so much with the cruise itineraries, the ship itself or the destinations being visited, but with the collection of people that make up the “cast” of characters.

That’s right. Apparently, people can’t get enough of seeing the day-to-day lives of the privileged few who are part of the ship’s contingent for all or part of the nine-month itinerary to every corner of the globe. For whatever reason, its TikTok channel, #CruiseTok, has gone viral and has racked up over 2.7 billion views before even completing its tour of the Americas.

Travel Weekly’s Richard Turen, who has sailed on a World Cruise himself, perused social posts and watched plenty of these videos before offering an analysis of the phenomenon. “The sailing is also on its way to becoming the most productive social media factory in history, and I believe it will end up being the most shared travel experience in history,” he wrote. 

Turin pointed out that there are no celebrities to speak of sailing aboard the World Cruise, so that doesn’t really account for its social-media popularity. In fact, proper celebrities cannot purchase passage, a decision Royal Caribbean made years ago to prevent it from becoming a publicity bonanza. 

There are however, some serious travel influencers aboard, along with scads of amateur social media personalities who are enthusiastically posting about their onboard experiences. And, the power of those platforms themselves has caused the sailing to go viral.

Okay, granted, influencers are there to provide a degree of publicity, But, as Turin observed, “I also suspect that the marketing team at Royal Caribbean underestimated the impact of this itinerary.”

Thus far, the exposure generated by this (evidently) magnetic set of circumstances has all been positive. According to posts, “everyone is getting along really well” and even crew members are getting in on the streaming social action with some truly terrible singing.

For now, at least, it’s all in good fun, but one wonders how long it will be before, as with reality programming, interpersonal drama (manufactured or otherwise) rears its ugly head.

Before the nine-month cruise comes to a close, much of the crew will have rotated off-duty, but influencers and others who are onboard for the duration will have visited 65 countries across all seven continents, stopped in 150 ports of call and enjoyed 18 overnights before it’s all over.