Listen, we don’t control the internet. Nor do we have any say in how people exercise their free will.

So please, don’t blame us if we’re the first to tell you that runners have discovered they can churn butter by strapping bags of heavy cream and salt to their torsos and running around for an hour.

They’re calling it “churning and burning,” or more simply, “butter runs.” Yes, it does work, and yes, they’re eating it at the end.

We’ll give you a moment to process this information.

“You may be asking yourself, ‘Why?'” Libby Cope, an Oregon-based outdoor and running content creator, says in her viral TikTok video with more than 2.3 million views that jumpstarted the trend.

“The real question is, ‘Why not?'” she adds, while pouring a carton of heavy cream into a Ziploc bag and sprinkling sea salt into it.

And that, dear reader, may in fact be the entire crux of the butter run. Because who amongst those of us who take part in the sport of running hasn’t, at some point, wondered: What exactly is the point of this?

Sure, maybe we’re getting PBs and Strava likes and making sizeable dents in our audiobooks, but at the end of the day, aren’t we just all running … nowhere?

Why not churn butter while you’re at it, indeed.

OK, but actually, why?

For science, Cope told CBC News in an interview Friday.

“We Googled it and there weren’t any prior runners, to our knowledge, that successfully made butter,” Cope said.

“So we were like … OK, so we’d maybe be the first?” 

In her first butter run video posted Feb. 25, Cope and her boyfriend Jacob Arnold zip bags of cream into their running vests and hit the trails.

“Let’s make some butter,” Cope says, before taking off at a brisk clip.

At 2.5 miles, or about four kilometres, Cope does a “butter check,” notes the cream is still mostly liquid, and keeps “churning and burning.” By 6.6 kilometres, the liquid starts getting creamy. By 8.6 kilometres, she removes the bag from her vest once and for all, and oohs at the curds that have formed.

At the end, she spreads the finished product on some bread, and eats it.

Is this really a trend?

Yes, it really is.

A quick search of TikTok and Instagram shows countless people trying a butter run and variations of it for themselves. Some test it at different speeds and distances; others have wondered if they can make butter while dancing (somehow, yes) or have instead made ice cream.

Some have added their own twist, like Irene Choi, who made corn juice honey butter, calling it “an excellent use of my time” in an Instagram video with 2.9 million views.

“I am so inspired and invested in this. Is this the reason I finally start running? To make butter and ice cream?” a user commented on an Instagram video by Calgarian Jonny Arnott in which he attempts runner ice cream after a failed attempt to make runner butter.

On Google Trends, searches for “butter run” have spiked globally.

“To be honest we didn’t expect it to blow up quite this much but are so happy with the response! Love seeing people get outside,” Cope told CBC News. 

In follow-up videos, Cope and Arnold tried making flavoured run butters by adding seasonings like garlic herb and honey.

“This is why God invented free will and TikTok,” a viewer commented.

How does it work?

Oh, we are so glad you asked.

All you need to make your own butter is two cups of 35 per cent cream and a 1/2 teaspoon of salt, according to Dairy Farmers of Canada. The recipe recommends using glass jars, not baggies zipped to human torsos, but the principles are the same: Shake, strain out the liquid, rinse the butter in water and serve.

The Center for Dairy Research in the U.S. explains that the churning process (i.e. the shaking) encourages the fat globules in the cream to to coalesce and form solid butter clumps while pushing out the remaining milk, known as buttermilk.

So, essentially, the same jostling and impact that makes your knees and hips ache during a run can also serve the side quest of churning butter.

And there’s historical precedent — it’s widely thought that the earliest form of butter (pre-churns), were made by accident when milk stored in bags was shaken while travelling over bumpy roads, or when nomadic people would hang sacks of milk off pack animals.

But because the shaking won’t be as vigorous as a regular churn or shaking a jar (unless you fall down the side of a mountain), you’ll probably have to run for about an hour to make butter, according to Cope.

I’m in. Any other tips?

When butter costs as much as $10 a block at your local grocery store, why not, right? Plus, as Runner’s World points out, we could all use a little whimsy and joy these days, “even if that means churning butter.”

In the name of churnalism, we have watched dozens of butter run videos and read through an entire internet’s worth of articles to amass some tips.

The temperature matters, according to the New York Post: too cold, and the liquid molecules won’t form to make clumps; too hot, and the cream will stay runny. Room-temperature cream is best, according to Scientific American, which likely explains why those runners who tried to churn butter on snowy days weren’t as successful.

Other runners have suggested loosening your running vest slightly so the cream can bounce around more, and running on bumpy trails, on rough terrains or up and down city stairs to help shake things up.

“My tips for anyone who is attempting to make butter on their run is to definitely double bag,” Cope said. But don’t worry, she says — the sound of the cream sloshing around is no different than if you were carrying water.

“Plus, it thickens up after about a mile of running and you don’t feel it or hear it anymore.”