Mom is a human too, a human
TL;DR · Origin‘Mum is a person too, a person!’ comes from the episode ‘Years of a Mother’s Love Stained with Tears’ of the EBS programme It’s Changed, b…
Origin
‘Mum is a person too, a person!’ comes from the episode ‘Years of a Mother’s Love Stained with Tears’ of the EBS programme It’s Changed, broadcast on January 26th, 2015.
The episode dealt with the conflict between a mother and a son who had not worked for close to ten years and spent his time gaming. When the son briefly attempted a job and then quit and came home, the mother let out everything she had held back: ‘Mum is a person too, a person! I trusted you this time!’ The source is not a funny scene; it is the heaviest moment in the documentary.
Spread
It aired in January but only spread online around July and August of that year, starting on communities including DCInside. With youth unemployment dragging on, it meshed with the era’s online culture of mocking the young unemployed shut in at home, and travelled fast.
What spread was the sentence pattern rather than the line. Keeping the frame ‘X is also Y, Y!’ and swapping the words produced endless variants. Part of why it lasted is that it lets you needle someone without saying anything that is unambiguously abusive.
Usage
- The word-swapping game built on the sentence frame
- Exaggerating the moment when someone who has been holding back finally erupts
- Adding the sense of having been let down by someone you trusted
It is worth noting that the source is a painful moment involving a real person. The mother went on to work in a restaurant and published a book, and news of how she was doing brought the meme back into conversation.
Sources
- Namuwiki, ‘Mum is a person too, a person’ — the EBS broadcast of January 26th, 2015; the content about a son who had not worked for close to a decade; the July–August 2015 spread on DCInside and elsewhere; the sentence-frame variants; and what became of the participants
