Björk's Riddle

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About

Björk's Riddle or Bjork's Riddle refers to a series of memes and tweets about Icelandic singer and songwriter Björk offering people and celebrities a riddle when she greets them. The trend, which typically uses the phrasal template of "X: bjork it's so nice to see yo- / bjork: i have riddle" as an exploitable image macro, started on Twitter in November 2021 but received more attention in early 2022 on TikTok.

Origin

On November 21st, 2021, Twitter^[1] user perfectbIue posted a tweet that captioned a photo of Beyoncé and Björk greeting each other at a party in London back in 2003.^[2] The tweet (shown below) read, "bey: bjork it's so nice to see yo- / bjork: i have riddle. what can pass through trees without making rustle of the leaf?" After being posted, it received roughly 6,500 likes over the course of three months.

Spread

On November 22nd, 2021, Twitter^[3] user TAEZEALIA posted a tweet that followed the same phrasal template, inserting her own imagined Björk riddle. The tweet (shown below) received 28 likes over two weeks. It is the first known variant of the original tweet.

The trend received more attention on TikTok a month later when TikToker^[4] yungwalker posted a video on December 27th (shown below, left) of himself voicing over perfectblue's tweet. Over the course of 10 days, the TikTok received roughly 398,500 plays and 75,300 likes. TikToker^[5] flavafraseflavafrase quickly posted his own version the next day (shown below, right). It received 570,500 plays and 53,300 likes in nine days.

On December 30th, 2021, a video posted to Twitter^[6] by user UmbranOcto received roughly 1,500 likes over the course of six days. UmbranOcto also posted this video to TikTok,^[7] where it gained roughly 31,600 plays and 4,600 likes in the same amount of time.

UmbranOcto's video was reposted to Instagram by multiple meme pages in the days following, like Instagram^[8] page ultravioletllove, who received up to 9,800 likes for their post in four days.

The virality of the voiceover trend circled back to Twitter in early 2022, where multiple self-referential tweets were posted about Björk's riddle. For instance, on January 3rd, 2022, Twitter^[9] user RALPHALXNDR posted a tweet (shown below, left) that captioned a video of Björk singing happily with, "björk when u answer her riddle correctly." It received roughly 7,400 likes in two days. Twitter^[10] user mteamvenus posted a tweet the following day (shown below, right) that referenced Yoko Ono. It received roughly 2,100 likes in one day.

More Twitter users hopped onto the trend, with memes and tweets about Björk's riddles becoming increasingly absurd and ominous. Meme creators started hypothesizing what would happen if someone answered Björk's riddle incorrectly. For instance, on January 5th, 2022, Twitter^[11] user sawdustdiamond posted a tweet (shown below) that captioned a blurry photo of hospital equipment with, "DO NOT ANSWER BJORK RIDDLE WRONG." It received roughly 10,400 likes in less than 24 hours.