Where In The World Is Onijah Robinson?

Onijah Robinson went viral for her antics in Pakistan—then mysteriously vanished in Dubai. I spoke with the TikTok detective still searching for answers.

*NOTE* As of Friday March 4th 2025 Onijah Robinson is back home in NYC

The internet has a cruel way of treating people like entertainment, propping them up as viral sensations before tossing them aside the moment something new comes along. It’s an endless cycle of obsession and abandonment, and few cases illustrate this better than the bizarre, unsettling story of Onijah Robinson, or as the Internet called her, “The American Woman in Pakistan”.

At first, she was a spectacle. Clips of her interviews in Pakistan, her demands for money, and her erratic behavior spread like wildfire across TikTok and Twitter. She became the internet’s latest fixation, a real-life soap opera unfolding in real-time, and, as is often the case with Black women who go viral, she wasn’t just watched—she was mocked, dissected, memeified, turned into a caricature rather than a person.

But when her story stopped being funny, when reports surfaced of her being detained in Dubai, appearing confused, possibly unwell, the internet did what it always does. It moved on.

There were no major outcries, no sustained discussions about her well-being. One moment, she was everywhere, and the next, she was gone. The same people who had once been invested in her every move simply lost interest. And for a Black woman in distress, that silence is familiar. In the absence of constant viral updates, her story faded into the background, just another unfinished chapter in the endless scroll of social media.

Before Robinson became a viral mystery, she was a woman chasing love, or at least, the illusion of it.

In October 2024, she left the United States and flew to Karachi, Pakistan, convinced she was about to start a new life with the man she loved. His name was Nidal Ahmed Memon, a 19-year-old she had met on Facebook. He had told her everything she wanted to hear: that he loved her, that he wanted to marry her, that they would build a future together.

But when she arrived in Pakistan, the reality was nothing like the fantasy she had imagined. Memon’s family was horrified by her presence. Not only was she significantly older than Memon—reportedly 34 years old—but she had also misrepresented herself online, claiming to be much younger. When she showed up at their home expecting to be welcomed as a future daughter-in-law, she was instead rejected outright.

Onijah Robinson in Memon’s building

The family, desperate to remove themselves from the situation, took Memon and disappeared. Suddenly, Robinson was alone in a foreign country with no real plan, no support, and no way home with her tourist visa soon expiring, making her an illegal resident.

Yet, instead of leaving, she stayed.

With nowhere else to go, she took up residence in the basement of the very building where Memon’s family had once lived, waiting for his return. The situation might have remained a quiet tragedy if not for what happened next—the internet found her.

In the digital age, the line between tragedy and entertainment is thinner than ever. Once local residents and media outlets caught wind of Robinson’s bizarre circumstances, her story became an internet sensation.

People began flocking to see her, filming TikToks and livestreaming their interactions. She gave interviews to anyone who would listen, making increasingly outlandish statements. At one point, she claimed she wanted to "reconstruct Pakistan" because she was dissatisfied with the infrastructure. In other moments, she demanded absurd amounts of money from the Pakistani government—sometimes $100,000, other times $3,000 per week—insisting she needed it to "settle in Dubai."

Her presence created chaos in the neighborhood. The building’s residents, unable to move freely due to the constant crowds gathering outside, eventually filed a police complaint. The media’s round-the-clock coverage only fueled the frenzy, making her an even bigger internet sensation.

Authorities eventually stepped in. A Pakistani welfare organization, Chhipa Welfare Association, took Robinson into their care, offering her a way out—return tickets to the U.S. and a chance to go home. She refused.

As Robinson’s viral fame grew, so did concerns about her mental state. The bizarre nature of her statements, her refusal to leave, and her erratic public behavior led many to question whether she was struggling with more than just heartbreak.

Her son, watching from afar, finally broke his silence. In a TikTok video, he stated that his mother was mentally unstable and begged Pakistani authorities to send her home. It was a turning point. Up until that moment, much of the internet had treated Robinson as a spectacle, someone to laugh at, meme, parody and dissect. But now, her situation seemed more troubling than entertaining.

Following her son’s plea, Robinson was admitted to a psychiatric ward in Karachi where she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She was placed under police security, though that didn’t stop her from continuing to engage with the internet. Videos surfaced of her posing with hospital staff, filming TikToks, and even turning one of her security officers, a woman named Shabana, into a minor internet celebrity in her own right.

Despite her hospitalization, Robinson’s journey didn’t end in Pakistan. Authorities eventually arranged for her to be deported, putting her on a flight out of Karachi, bound for New York.

But instead of going home, Robinson took a detour.

Somehow, she ended up in Dubai, where she continued to make headlines. Videos emerged of her walking through the city in her signature lime green hijab and red lipstick, taking photos with locals. At first, it seemed like more of the same—another strange chapter in her never-ending internet saga.

Then, things took a darker turn.

In one viral clip, she was seen holding a cigarette and getting into an argument with a local man. "If you do something, I’m gonna burn your face," she told him, holding the lit cigarette inches from his skin. "I’m deadass. I’m not playing. Make a decision."

The video set off alarm bells. Dubai has notoriously strict laws about public behavior, particularly when it comes to interactions between men and women. Some speculated that this incident led to her being detained. Others believed she was simply wandering the city, her mental state deteriorating further.

Soon after, reports surfaced that she had been taken into protective custody. Some claimed she had been arrested, though there was no official confirmation. A few internet users even speculated she had somehow made it back to New York, but there was no proof.

Then—nothing.

Robinson’s TikTok page went silent. News outlets stopped covering her. People stopped asking questions.

Just like that, she was gone.

Among the few people still actively trying to track down what happened to Onijah Robinson is Yasmin, a London-based TikToker who has been documenting the case since its early days. Unlike many of us who were sucked in by the spectacle before moving on to the next viral moment, she has remained committed to finding answers. I spoke with her about what drew her to the case, the challenges of online sleuthing, and why the internet has already moved on.

Yasmin’s background isn’t in journalism or criminal investigations—she actually works in finance—but like many content creators today, she has found herself in the role of an internet detective. “I was looking for a new story, so I was doing a lot of checking online for breaking news,” she told me. “I came across Onijah’s story and found it fascinating, especially how she went to Pakistan and then ended up outside that family’s house for so long. I made a TikTok about it, and it got a lot of attention, but I didn’t do any follow-ups until the video of her in Dubai with the cigarette burn incident. That’s when it stopped being funny for me—I was really concerned.”

Yasmin on TikTok

This is a pattern that plays out often on the internet. A person becomes a viral spectacle, whether through their own doing or through how others perceive them, and the internet consumes their story as entertainment. But when things take a darker turn, interest evaporates. “Everybody was laughing, making jokes, sharing memes,” Yasmin said. “And then when it wasn’t funny anymore, when it turned into something serious, people stopped caring.”

But Yasmin didn’t stop caring. She kept investigating, reaching out to sources close to Onijah, verifying information, and trying to track her movements. “A lot of the time, I get tips from people who message me on TikTok or send me videos they’ve found on Instagram. That’s how I got the video of Onijah being removed from a flight,” she explained. “I also spoke to the developers of her app, the Onijah Coin. They were actually in contact with her, so they provided real messages and receipts.”

That adds another absurd layer to this case. While Yasmin is trying to piece together the story of a missing person, there’s been an attempt to profit off Onijah’s notoriety. The developers behind the “Onijah Coin”—a crypto venture linked to Onijah’s name—have somehow managed to transform her disappearance into a bizarre cash grab. They claim Onijah worked with the developers from the start, securing millions in tokens and even receiving financial help while in Pakistan. While these claims remain unverified, they illuminate a troubling truth: in the world of influencers and viral culture, it’s not enough to simply witness or comment on a tragedy; some see it as an opportunity to profit from it.

OnijahCoin webpage

Despite these efforts to turn Onijah into a marketing tool, Yasmin remains focused on finding the truth and concrete information about Onijah’s current whereabouts remains scarce. The latest she’s heard is that Onijah is still in Dubai, but even that is unconfirmed. “Her family says they haven’t heard from her. There have been no calls, nothing,” Yasmin said. “I even spoke to a woman who was in a Dubai prison, and she told me there are phones there that inmates can use to call their families. So why hasn’t she reached out? Is she even in Dubai anymore? No one really knows.”

"Sadly, we cannot go to the US Embassy. We can't talk to them. We can't directly go to authorities. We're not part of a family, so it's very difficult. We're kind of in between."

Yasmin’s biggest frustration is how quickly social media has abandoned the case. “When I post updates now, the views are really low,” she said. “No one seems to want to know anymore.” That’s the harsh reality of how platforms like TikTok—and the core of TikTok detective culture—function: stories like Onijah’s rely on sustained public interest to survive. Once that fades, so does the momentum. Initially, Onijah’s disappearance was a viral spectacle, sparking intrigue and content creation. But while mainstream interest has faded, Yasmin says there’s still a core group of people, mostly women, who refuse to look away

"I’m just a woman worried about another woman, alone in a foreign country, constantly surrounded by strange men. A lot of women in my comments feel the same way—they’re genuinely concerned for her. There’s a whole community of us following her story, sharing information, and hoping she makes it home safely."

Yasmin’s continued investigation into Onijah’s disappearance may not change the course of the case, but it serves as a reminder of how fleeting attention is in the digital age. TikTok detective culture is both a strength and a limitation: it empowers people to take matters into their own hands, but it’s also governed by an algorithm that can quickly render stories irrelevant once they no longer generate engagement. Onijah’s story isn’t just about one woman’s unraveling journey, it’s about all of us and how we consume lives like content, how we memeify misfortune until it’s no longer entertaining, how we let the scroll bury what we once obsessed over. Yasmin’s determination to keep it alive, if only for a little longer, offers a counterpoint to the relentless cycle of forgetfulness that dominates the digital landscape.

“I just don’t want her to be forgotten,” she told me, her voice tinged with both resolve and helplessness. She’s not a journalist or a detective, just a woman in finance who stumbled into a story and couldn’t look away. Yet her efforts—posting updates, chasing leads, pleading for people to care—crash against the limits of TikTok’s algorithm and the public’s short memory. “We have a lot of power here on TikTok,” she insists, “and we are able to do something.” But as she admits, that power only works when people keep watching.

Either way, Onijah’s fate hangs in a void the internet created—a void we helped build, one click at a time. How long until the next Onijah comes along, and how long until we forget her too?