I Cannot Let You Escape, Squidward

About

I Cannot Let You Escape, Squidward, continued I Am Adding Another Demon Core To Your Confinement Until You Calm Down, refers to an absurd and creepy SpongeBob meme in which SpongeBob is keeping Squidward captive in a basement and checking in on him on Day 93, giving him another Demon Core. The meme akin to Schizoposting was originally made by Instagram user @absolutenutcase162 who's additionally responsible for We Have Come For Your Nectar and Hi Squidward, among others. A voiceover video of the meme was posted to YouTube in early 2023, gaining various animation memes that became increasingly creepy, spreading to iFunny and TikTok by May 2023.

Origin

On January 12th, 2023, Instagram^[1] user @absolutenutcase162 posted a two-panel meme that showed SpongeBob on "Day 93" at the top of a basement's staircase with a speech bubble reading, "I cannot let you escape, squidward. I am adding another demon core to your confinement until you calm down." Squidward is then shown with no eyes and many wrinkles, looking back at SpongeBob while surrounded by demon cores. Over the course of four months, the post gained roughly 6,500 likes (shown below).

Spread

Roughly two months later on March 7th 2023, Twitter^[2] user SNick (@SNick_WT) created and tweeted a video that added a voiceover to @absolutenutcase162's meme, with Squidward screaming at the video's end. The tweet received over 5,430 likes and 1150 retweets in over 4 months. On March 11th, 2023, YouTuber^[3] Mr. Mysterious uploaded a repost on YouTube. Over the course of two months, the video gained roughly 224,100 views and 17,000 likes. Later, on May 19th, 2023, SNick uploaded the video to YouTube^[4] (shown below, left). Going into mid-2023, more video variations surfaced on YouTube, including a different yet similar voiceover uploaded by YouTuber^[5] Memetastic on April 11th, 2023, that gained roughly 88,300 views and 4,900 likes in one month (shown below, right).

Increasingly elaborate iterations of the video format surfaced going into May 2023. For instance, on April 28th, 2023, YouTuber^[5] PrivateChen posted a variation that replaced demon cores with uranium, gaining roughly 16,000 views and 660 likes in 20 days (shown below, left). On May 2nd, 2023, YouTuber^[6] Añarao posted an iteration that was visually similar to Analog Horror, gaining roughly 157,500 views and 12,000 likes in two weeks (shown below, right).

Many of the videos were reposted to TikTok^[7] and iFunny^[8] going into May 2023.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References