Crab Rangoon

Submission 32,612

About

Crab Rangoon, also known as Crab Puffs, are filled crisp dumplings filled with a combination of cream cheese, crab meat and vegetables which are often served in American Chinese and Thai restaurants. Online, the dish has often appeared in memes and humorous posts that compliment its flavor quality, similar to the Garlic Bread memes.

Origin

Before May 31st, 2012, comic artist B.Z. Toons (Brian Zakowski) posted a comic about crab rangoon (shown below).^[1] In the following years, the comic received moderate circulation online.

The first viral joke about crab rangoon was tweeted^[2] by journalst David Roth (@david_j_roth) on June 13th, 2012, and received over 12,500 retweets and 27,400 likes in eight years. On Twitter, the joke often resurfaced in the years after being posted and was also featured in multiple articles online. On August 1st, 2017, article "Five Years of Crab Rangoon" was published by The AWL.^[3] On September 17th, 2018, For The Win^[4] published an article "We showed Stephen A Smith the viral 'crab rangoon' tweet."

On November 18th, 2014, Far Cry 4 video game was released by Ubisoft.^[5] In one of the early scenes of the game, the protagonist is offered to wait and enjoy crab rangoon by the main antagonist Pagan Min. If the player obliges and waits for Min's return, an alternative ending is unlocked.

Now, please stay right there, enjoy the crab rangoon, don't move, I'll be right back.

Spread

Until 2018, crab rangoon saw limited spread in memes, with several notable posts appearing on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. For example. a March 25th, 2015, photoshop by Redditor^[6] Spinnerhead received over 150 upvotes in /r/HybridAnimals in five years (shown below, left). A December 12th, 2016, post by Instagram^[7] user FuckitimaRobot received over 3,100 likes in three years (scraped post shown below, center). A July 18th, 2017, tweet^[8] by user @SydneyyyyAnn received over 420 retweets and 3,000 likes in three years (shown below, right).

On August 26, 2018, Twitter^[9] user @RexTrilleron posted I'm a Man / Woman Looking for meme about crab rangoon which received over 8,300 retweets and 43,100 likes in two years (shown below, left), with another tweet^[10] by @RexTillerson receiving additional 580 retweets and 1,600 likes in the same period (shown below, right).

In the following years, memes and humorous posts about crab rangoon maintained popularity on Twitter, Facebook and other online platforms.