Arson Frog

About

Arson Frog is an image macro of a blue frog with the caption "arson." The image is based on a comment that describes, in jest, the type of humor appreciated by generation z. The creator of the image successfully encouraged many other TikTok users to make the image their profile picture.

Origin

On October 21st, 2019, TikTok^[1] user @tinymeatgang69699 posted a video of someone laughing at various decorative signs that feature quotations and jokes, which many commented were intended for the baby boomers. In less than two weeks, the video received more than 87,000 likes and 1,000 comments (shown below, left).

TikTok user @matherfukr wrote, "I mean to be fair these are actually jokes. Half of gen z would laugh if someone took a picture of a frog, colored it blue and wrote arson under it." The post received more than 5,000 favorites (shown below, right).

Several days later, on October 24th, TikTok^[2] user @heyitssneha posted a video about the comment, sharing that she had drawn the picture and found it hilarious. The post received more than 413,000 likes and 17,000 comments in about one week (shown below).

In the video, she requested that people make the image their profile picture to "confuse a bunch of people" (shown below).

Spread

Following the video, a number of TikTok users began using the image as their profile pictures as evidenced by the comment section for the video, which features a number of examples (shown below, left and center).

Additionally, many users changed their profile names to variations on "arson frog (shown below, right).

The image also inspired artworks on TikTok. User @fungusfetus posted a video of someone drawing and panting the frog (shown below, left). TikTok user @awesome5364 also posted a video of someone painting the frog, which received more than 2,100 likes (shown below, right).

On October 29th, 2019, Twitter user @reedkavner shared the video on TikTok. They wrote, "While we’re having fun with "ok boomer" (shout out @TaylorLorenz) today, here's an adjacent phenomenon: Hundreds (thousands? MILLIONS?) of TikTokers have changed their profile pic to a photo of a frog that says "arson" because of this video." The tweet received more than 17,000 views (shown below).

While we’re having fun with "ok boomer" (shout out @TaylorLorenz) today, here's an adjacent phenomenon: Hundreds (thousands? MILLIONS?) of TikTokers have changed their profile pic to a photo of a frog that says "arson" because of this video pic.twitter.com/7IkAjlozaI

— Reed Kavner (@reedkavner) October 29, 2019

Search Interest

External References