About

Bugs When You Lift Up A Rock, also written Bugs When You Pick Up A Rock or Bugs When You Turn Over A Rock, refers to a catchphrase used to caption image macros showing groups of people or characters meant to represent bugs looking up when uncovered beneath a rock. The concept was first referenced on Reddit in 2021, but the more notable phrase was coined on Twitter in early 2022. The tweet screenshot became an exploitable in memes on Instagram, among other platforms, in 2022.

Origin

On May 21st, 2021, Redditor /u/thedirtdirt posted a meme to /r/memes ^[9] that captioned Limmy waking up with "Me: *turns over big rock* / The bugs underneath it:" Over the course of a year and a half, the meme received roughly 131,000 upvotes (shown below, left). A year later, on May 9th, 2022, Twitter^[1] user Fred_Delicious tweeted, "bugs when you lift up a rock," captioning the image of Mark Zuckerberg's group selfie in which none of them are smiling. Over the course of seven months, the tweet received roughly 412,000 likes (shown below, right).

Spread

Fred_Delicious' tweet was reposted to other platforms like Instagram^[2] on May 10th, 2022, by the account @humor, earning roughly 40,500 likes in seven months. On May 11th, 2022, the Instagram^[3] account @gourmet.cat.memes exploited the tweet screenshot, replacing the image macro with one showing multiple cats and earning roughly 6,900 likes in seven months (shown below, left). Later on May 11th, 2022, the Instagram^[4] account @yungstarbeam posted a similar meme that replaced the image macro with one depicting Zyzz and other aesthetic bodybuilders, earning roughly 6,900 likes in the same time period (shown below, right).

On May 14th, 2022, the Instagram^[5] account dark_iron_gains posted a video meme using the catchphrase, captioning a video of aesthetic bodybuilders walking to breakcore music. Over the course of seven months, the post received roughly 28,300 likes (shown below).

Going into the remainder of 2022, viral usage of the catchphrase and concept persisted in memes across social media. For instance, on November 24th, 2022, Twitter^[6] user adamthealright tweeted a photo of a dinner party at the Hotel Astor in 1904^[7] with the caption "Bugs when you turn over a rock," earning 25 likes in one month. On November 25th, 2022, Twitter user adamthealright screenshotted his tweet and posted it to his Instagram^[8] account, official.agnew, earning roughly 7,400 likes in one month (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References