Quoicoubeh

About

Quoicoubeh is a French nonsensical prank answer to any question ending in Quoi ? (French for What). The goal is either to wait for a "quoi" question to come up or to the lure the potential victim into asking it as a form of verbal bait and switch in a manner exceedingly similar to its English equivalents Joe Mama and Deez Nuts. Since its explosion on the French web following a viral TikTok of a young man doing the punchline on a teacher, variations popped up to prank other kinds of retorts such as Quirikiki for Qui ? (French for Who), Apayinye for Hein ? (French for Huh) or even Commandant de bord (French for Airplane Captain) for Comment ? (French for How).

Precursor

In pre-internet times, plays on words to prank "what" question already existed. The most commonly known is -feur as an answer to quoi, which was meant to make the word coiffeur (French for Male Hair Stylist). Though originating offline, the French Wiktionnary^[1] definition of "-feur" as a prank suffix traces its online usage back to 2004.

Origin

On December 5th, 2022, A French TikToker known as Camskolavache or also La Vache for short, uploaded a short TikTok^[4] of himself stating that he is "the best at this game" and then cutting to a classroom, in which he is trying to make his teacher asking him "Quoi" for clarification, to which point he answered with the infamous word (shown below). The Tiktok accumulated over 3 million views in a little more than a month.

Spread

As it gained popularity, La Vache encouraged his audience to play along with his game, uploading more clips.
In late January 2023, several news articles popped up covering the phenomenon that began to be widespread, especially among mid-schoolers. A few English-speaking ones, such as a translated article from "Le Parisien"^[2] and "Teller Report"^[3] appeared as well to report the trend to foreigners. A common way to trigger a bewildered reaction became to ask the nonsensical question "T'as les cramptés ?".

The Quoicoubeh Dance

On March 8th, a young man called David Le Cailler uploaded a video of himself pranking the person filming and then doing a victory dance (shown below). The short gained more than 4 million views in over a month.

Remixes and a dancing trend ensued.

Search Interest

External References