About

Turkey Microwave refers to a viral social media prank in which young adults are encouraged to text their mothers asking how long it would take to microwave a 25-pound frozen turkey (a practice which would leave the turkey undercooked, dry, and mostly inedible) and post their mothers' responses. The challenge grew popular in the weeks leading to Thanksgiving of 2018.

Origin

The challenge began spreading as early as 2016. While it's unclear which post originated the challenge, it appeared to begin spreading on Facebook in December of that year. One of the earliest extant posts referencing the prank was posted December 17th, 2016 by Facebook user Claudia Francisco^[1] (shown below).

Spread

NBC affiliate KHQ covered the spread of the prank that year under the name "25 pound turkey challenge.
^[2] However, it was not until 2018 that the challenge began seeing national attention. Starting in November of 2018, the challenge began seeing spread on Twitter. References to seeing the challenge spread again began appearing on November 11th,^[3] and popular examples began appearing on Twitter by the 14th. For example, user @DorothyScales2's post gained over 1,700 retweets and 8,100 likes (shown below, left). On November 16th, user @Gene_Parmesan2 tweeted an example where his mother knew the prank when he tried it, gaining over 8,400 retweets and 50,000 likes (shown below, right).

The jokes were covered by several national publications in autumn of 2018, including The Daily Dot,^[4] USA Today,^[5] and Buzzfeed.^[6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References