Scorpion and Frog

Confirmed 52,333

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About

Scorpion and Frog refers to an image of a scorpion on a frog's back as it tries to cross a river. The image is in reference to the classic fable of The Scorpion and The Frog in which a scorpion requires a frog's help to cross a river. The illustration has been used as an exploitable image macro in which the Frog is the sympathetic one and the Scorpion is the aggressor, often photoshopping various elements onto the frog and scorpion or adding additional text captions. The format was popularized in 2021 across a range of sites and platforms.

Origin

In the original fable that the meme references, the scorpion wants to cross the water but is unable to swim, so he enlists the help of the frog. The frog is scared because it's a deadly scorpion, but after the scorpion says that if it were to sting the frog they would both die, the frog agrees to ferry it across. At the halfway point, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, declaring that it is just following its nature. A dramatic telling of the fable, complete with motion graphics, was uploaded to YouTube^[1] by the channel GangusKitty, who obtained 120,000 views in nine years (shown below).

An illustration used for Wikipedia^[2] about the story was used as the template and format for the creation of the meme about the Scorpion and Frog, originally uploaded on February 4th, 2020, by the editor Kurzon (shown below).

On January 9th, 2021, iFunny^[3] user GoodSamaritin uploaded the first-known meme using the image, in which the Frog is showing concern while the scorpion simply comments back "lol" and "lmao," receiving 48 likes in seven months (shown below).

Spread

From there, the meme floated around in its original form until being posted in video form on the subreddit /r/youtubehaiku.^[4] It was posted on January 18th, 2021, by Redditor The_Secret_Nein, where it received 290 upvotes in six months (shown below).

On March 6th, 2021, Redditor Cow_Fu posted an enhanced version to the /r/MonsterHunterWorld^[5] subreddit in which the frog and scorpion are replaced by a Hunter and the Vespoid creature from the game, gaining 2,100 upvotes in five months (shown below).