Cockroach Meme
TL;DR · OriginThe game is to ask "Mom, what would you do if I turned into a cockroach?" and post a screenshot of the answer. It started on Twitter in March 2023. According to reporting in …
Origin
The game is to ask "Mom, what would you do if I turned into a cockroach?" and post a screenshot of the answer. It started on Twitter in March 2023. According to reporting in the Hankook Ilbo, a user posted the question they had put to their mother after reading Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, and the post passed 26 million views.
The ending of The Metamorphosis underlies the question. Gregor Samsa wakes up transformed into an insect, and his family increasingly treats him as something to be disposed of. The question, then, is really "would you still love me if I became useless and repulsive," restated through the most extreme available metaphor. That is also why a moving answer draws such an outsized reaction.
Spread
It became a proper game once people started sorting the replies into categories: broadly the moving ones, the bleak ones, and the ones that simply refused to engage. Roundup posts circulated in those groupings, and screenshotting KakaoTalk conversations became the standard format.
Celebrity answers accelerated it. Taemin said he would track down the wizard who turned his fan into a cockroach, give them a piece of his mind, and have the spell undone; BTOB's Seo Eun-kwang said he would keep the roach as a pet at home. Among parents' answers, one widely quoted reply mixed affection with a jab: that since your room is already indistinguishable from a roach nest and you are loved anyway, nothing would change.
In April 2023, outlets including Newsis, Asia Economy and ZDNet Korea covered the trend and its answer types; in May the Hankook Ilbo added an analysis of why it was happening. In that piece, Professor Yoon Seok-jin of Chungnam National University read the trend as highly credentialed members of Gen Z, feeling disliked by society, seeking confirmation that they exist and matter, with post-pandemic job insecurity and fear of being left behind cited as background.
How it is used
- As a question put to a parent or partner to test for unconditional affection
- As a sharing game, screenshotting replies and sorting them into moving and bleak
- As conversational material, since the answer exposes the responder's character
- As the popular reference point when discussing The Metamorphosis or conditional love
Sources
- Hankook Ilbo, "Why a cockroach? The bittersweet question kids are asking their mothers" (May 2nd, 2023) — the March 2023 Twitter origin following a reading of Kafka, the 26 million views, the answers from Taemin and Seo Eun-kwang, and Professor Yoon Seok-jin's analysis
- ZDNet Korea, "'Mom, what if I became a cockroach?' — the answer types, sorted" (April 13th, 2023) — evidence of the answer-typing that took hold
- Newsis, "'Mom, what would you do if I became a cockroach?'" (April 12th, 2023) — coverage of the trend as of April 2023
