About

Cigarette Cockroach is the nickname given to a cockroach that was recorded dragging a cigarette butt over a sewer drain in October 2019. The video quickly went viral on Twitter due to its similarity to pizza rat.

Origin

On October 18th, 2019, Twitter user @tkretchmar posted a video of a cockroach dragging a cigarette with the caption "Tired: pizza rat Wired: cigarette cockroach" (shown below). The video gained over 3.7 million views in three days and the tweet garnered over 21,100 retweets and 95,500 likes in three days.

Spread

On October 18th, 2019, Twitter users began adding their own captions to the cigarette cockroach video. The Twitter user @TheJewishDream,^[1] captioned the video "Gregor Samsa is just trying to make it to the weekend" referring to Kafka's short story "Metamorphosis" (shown below, left). The tweet accumulated over 2,000 likes and 430 retweets in three days. That same day, @marina_caitlin^[2] captioned the video "takes puff of cigarette, cockroach: Pizza rat? Haven't heard that name in YEARS" which gained over 1,700 retweets and 8,600 likes in three days (shown below, center). The Twitter account for Dictionary.com^[3] retweeted the video and shared the definition of drag as it relates to pulling and smoking (shown below, right). The tweet garnered over 200 likes and 40 retweets in three days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References