$8,000 Blue Couch

Submission 5,594

About

$8,000 Blue Couch, also known as Roche Bobois BUBBLE 2 Canapé or $8,000 Couch, refers to memes and reactions based on a viral video posted by TikToker @yafavv.mandaa in May 2023 in which she found a supposedly $8,000 blue "bubble" couch on the street in New York City. In the video, she took the couch and cleaned it with the help of her dad. The video was reposted to Twitter soon after where the original reposter asked, "WHY TF AM I NEVER THIS LUCKY." Thereafter, many memes and viral discourse about the couch surfaced on Twitter, mostly related to it possibly having bed bugs due to it being out on the street instead of being resold on Craigslist or elsewhere. Some online even speculated that the couch was not made by Roche Bobois and was instead a cheaper, Aliexpress knock-off.

Origin

On May 20th, 2023, TikToker^[1] @yafavv.mandaa posted a video that documented her finding a blue "bubble" couch on the streets of New York that she and her dad cleaned and then put into her apartment (a practice often called "stooping"). At the start of the video, TikToker @yafavv.mandaa showed herself looking up the couch when it was still on the street to see how expensive it was. On her phone's screen, it showed that the couch was made by the French furniture company Roche Bobois and was called the BUBBLE 2 Canapé. It was also listed on the company's website^[2] for $7,985. Over the course of two days, TikToker^[1] @yafavv.mandaa's video gained roughly 44.3 million plays and 5.1 million likes (shown below).

Spread

After the video went viral on TikTok, it earned various duets and stitches from other TikTokers who reacted to her finding. For instance, on May 20th, 2023, TikToker^[3] @inkkittenz posted a duet in which she urged her viewers to not pick up furniture from the street due to the potential of bed bugs, gaining roughly 793,100 plays and 59,300 likes in two days. Also on May 20th, Twitter^[4] user @boymolish reposted the video, captioning it, "WHY TF AM I NEVER THIS LUCKY 🤦🏾‍♂️," gaining roughly 76,400 likes in two days (shown below).

Twitter^[4] user @boymolish's repost sparked memetic discourse on Twitter going into the following days. Similar to TikToker @inkkittenz's point, many Twitter users made jokes about the couch likely being infested with bed bugs. For instance, on May 20th, Twitter^[5] user @saturnblooze captioned a video of a woman dancing with, "The bedbugs and roaches inside the couch after they find out they have a new home to infest:" gaining roughly 25,300 likes in two days (shown below).

On May 21st, 2023, Twitter^[6] user @dieworkwear tweeted the product image of the Roche Bobois' couch, pretending that his friend had given up the couch due to "the ghost of a Victorian child" haunting it. The tweet earned roughly 152,000 likes in one day (shown below, left). Soon after, others made similar memes with the couch's product photo, such as Twitter^[7] user @emmycantread on May 21st, who joked about the couch being "heavily squirted-on couch," earning roughly 121,000 likes in less than a day (shown below, right).

More humorous tweets about the couch were posted to Twitter^[8]^[9] going into May 2023. Some Twitter^[9]^[10] users even suggested that the fabric of TikToker @yafavv.mandaa's couch didn't match Roche Bobois' BUBBLE 2 fabric. Instead, Twitter^[9]^[10] users speculated that the couch matched more similarly with an Aliexpress knock-off.