Police I Swear To God, Not Simping For a Child

Submission 18,937

Part of a series on Little Dark Age. [View Related Entries]

About

Police I Swear To God, Not Simping For a Child are misheard lyrics from the song "Little Dark Age" by MGMT that meme creators on YouTube paired with SpongeBob SquarePants crying and pleading with police officers about him not simping for a child. The imagined arrest of SpongeBob in his own home was seemingly related to his sexual adoration of children. The meme trended on YouTube and TikTok in 2023, spawning various iterations that replaced what "child" SpongeBob was being arrested for and who was the subject of the arrest, as well as spanning across different subcultures and fandoms.

Origin

On December 30th, 2021, YouTuber^[1] johari64 posted a video that showed SpongeBob (in the episode "The Smoking Peanut"^[2]) being arrested in his home and crying while the song "Little Dark Age" by MGMT played, specifically a part of the song in which the lyrics phonetically sounded like, "Police I swear to God, not simping for a child." Written in Impact font, the misheard lyrics appeared in the video. Over the course of two years, the video gained roughly 116,400 views and 5,700 likes (shown below).

It is currently unknown who the original creator of the video is. When the text reading "not simping for a child" appears, a white watermark with a username appears on the first cop's pants, however, the video is too moldy or low-res to properly read it. Therefore, YouTuber^[1] johari64's video is likely a repost as variant iterations of the video surfaced on TikTok^[2] also on December 30th, 2021, alluding to a precursor origin possibly on Discord, Instagram or TikTok.

Spread

As noted, on December 30th, 2021, TikToker^[3] @catsemu posted the first-known variation of the original video, object labeling the cops with the logo of Blue Archive, gaining roughly 245,900 plays and 4,100 likes in two years (shown below, left). Going into 2022, the concept gained more iterations, such as a video posted by TikToker^[4] @toe.nail.roblox.baddie on October 10th, 2022, that used Roblox characters, gaining roughly 745,000 plays and 101,100 likes in nine months (shown below, right).

On May 13th, 2023, YouTuber^[5] Aboalhole reposted the original video, gaining roughly 1.4 million views in two months. The viral repost then inspired a slew of variations going into mid-2023. For instance, on July 14th, YouTuber^[6] aveirch posted a version that referenced the virtual influencers Baby Moona and Ckia from Hololive, gaining roughly 200,900 views and 12,000 likes in 12 days (shown below, left).

On July 24th, 2023, YouTuber^[7] SuperKek posted a version with an AI-generated voice to make an AI song cover, gaining roughly 110,000 views and 8,200 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Viral iterations persisted on YouTube^[8] and TikTok^[9] during the same timeframe in mid-2023.