실패작 소녀

Origin

The source is "Failure Girl" (失敗作少女), a Vocaloid track by the Japanese producer Kairiki Bear (かいりきベア) using the voice of Hatsune Miku. Per the entry in the Vocaloid database VocaDB it was published on August 8th, 2015, and its lyrics turn on self-negation — the narrator defining herself as a failure.

What became a meme in Korea was not the original but an arrangement. A version arranged by the Vocaloid producer MARETU, published on August 9th, 2019, was the one used as background music in short videos. Seven years separate the song's release in 2015 from its Korean vogue in 2022, and this arrangement is what bridged them.

Spread

The Korean trend began in early August 2022 with a video from 은구슬TV (Daram), a YouTube channel with few subscribers at the time. After it, a format spread on TikTok and YouTube Shorts in which people filmed themselves falling backward onto a bed with the MARETU arrangement playing, peaking around September 2022.

Two problems were raised as it spread. The first was attribution: most of the videos riding the trend credited the music to 은구슬TV rather than to Kairiki Bear or MARETU, and the erasure of the original creators drew heavy criticism.

The second was content. Because the song deals in self-negation and the trending action was a backward collapse, some derivative videos imitated self-harm and suicide. At that point the meme was treated as a social problem rather than a passing trend, and concern was especially sharp because it had spread among underage users.

How it is used

As background music for short videos exaggerating self-deprecation or helplessness
As a self-mocking comment quoting the "failure" line from the lyrics
As a reference point when looking back at the Shorts and TikTok trends of 2022
As a case study in creator-credit erasure and in harmful trends reaching minors