I won't steal from the fish shop anymore

Origin

"I'll never rob the fish shop again" is a line from "Romantic Cat" by the Korean band Cherry Filter. It was the title track of their second album, Made In Korea?, released on August 13th, 2002, with lyrics written by Han Kyung-rok of Crying Nut.

The song's narrator is a stray cat who has been getting by on petty theft from fish shops and now declares that he is done with it — he is going out to the sea to catch fish himself. In its original context the line is not resignation but a farewell to small ambitions. The meme turns it exactly inside out.

Spread

The lyric started circulating as image-macro text in 2024. A post titled with the line went up on Ruliweb's humor board on January 21st, 2024, and commenters played along by singing the following verses; some noted, a little sadly, that many readers no longer recognized it as a lyric at all.

The newsletter Trend A Word covered the phrase as a current meme in its October 22nd, 2024 issue. The settled form, spread mainly on X, is a two-panel setup: in the first panel the speaker solemnly vows never to do it again, and in the second they immediately go do it. The shorter the gap between vow and relapse, the funnier — which flips the song's earnest declaration into a joke about self-justification. Celebrities joined in too, including Dowoon of the band DAY6, who swapped in his own hobbies.

Usage

Right after breaking a vow to quit something — late-night snacks, gacha spending, shopping, cigarettes
As a caption mocking one's own diet or budgeting resolutions
Attached to cat photos as anthropomorphic comedy
As a template — keep "I'll never ___ again" and swap the object