Where Did The Tongue Twister 'Crazy? I Was Crazy Once, They Locked Me In A Rubber Room With Rats' Come From?

"Crazy? I was crazy once. They locked me in a room. A rubber room. A rubber room with rats. And rats make me crazy" is a rhyme that predates the internet but is nonetheless facing a resurgence as a viral copypasta. But where did the nonsensical rhyme come from and what does it mean? Here's the lore behind the looping rhyme.

Where Does "Crazy? I Was Crazy Once" Come From?

All collected evidence of the rhyme before the year 2010 points to it being a children's playground hymn geared towards driving their caretakers crazy. The earliest known evidence of the poem being posted to the internet comes from the year 2002, when a user named 3suns posted the rhyme to the internet forum "Everything 2" under the category, "songs designed to annoy."

How Did The "Crazy? I Was Crazy Once" Rhyme Spread?

The aforementioned forum post from 2002 received an unknown amount of attention and might not point definitively toward how the phrase may have spread on the internet. The earliest particularly notable use of the poem is a video posted to YouTube in the year 2007, where YouTuber Scarlet Grunt can be seen drenched in an eery green light while reciting the poem in a thick Irish accent.

Various blog posts posed the rhyme around the year 2015, with one blogger recounting how she would recite a version of the poem on the playground as a child, and another blog proposing an elongated version of the short looping sentences.

What Are Some Viral Examples Of The "Crazy? I Was Crazy Once." Rhyme Being Used?

Several TikTok users began quoting the copypasta in June 2023, with a video of several men milling around a kitchen while repeating the monotonous rhyme gathering over 7 million views on the platform. Another viral video shows a Spotify playlist made to resemble the rhyme.

For the full history of "Crazy? I was crazy once…" be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.