Upside-Down Pineapple

About

Upside-Down Pineapple is a slang term and symbol used as a hidden code by swingers to communicate with one another. Originating online in discussions on messageboards from the late 2000s, the image of an upside-down pineapple when placed on a mailbox, hotel room door or welcome mat supposedly indicates that the residents of the building are a swinger couple and potentially open to other sexual relationships. The interpretation of the upside-down pineapple as a secret symbol used by swingers to communicate with each other was popularized and received media coverage after a series of TikToks discussing the term went viral over the summer of 2022.

Origin

The earliest known mention of upside-down pineapples being code for swinger couples online comes from a series of Import Atlanta forum discussions from 2008. On July 24th, 2008, user Ran posted the earliest known mention of swingers using pineapples as secret code (seen below) to the Georgia-based car enthusiast messageboard.^[1]

On July 29th, 2008, a City Data forum user also mentioned the presence of a swinger community that uses pineapples as code in the town of Bridgemill, Georgia (seen below). ^[2]

Spread

In consecutive years, the upside-down pineapple is mentioned in various blog posts by people reiterating local rumors or urban legends.^[3][4] In 2022, a seasoned "cruiser" named Chris Hughes posted an op-ed to the website BeyondCruise^[5] about swinger culture on cruise ships and how pineapple imagery is used on suite doors to inform and invite interested people (example photos below).

2022 TikTok Resurgence

The upside-down pineapple also became a topic of conversation on TikTok in 2022, sparking a resurgence in the secret code online. On March 1st, 2022, TikToker^[6] @webbnation22 posted a video about coming to their AirBnB and discovering that their welcome mat had a pineapple on it. The video gathered over 11 million views and 300,000 likes in seven months (seen below, left). On July 23rd, TikToker^[7] @mrmrsswing then posted a video walking around in a grocery store with an upside-down pineapple in their cart, gathering over 6.8 million views and 200,000 likes in nearly four months (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References