About

Defeat Tom Nook is a catchphrase about the impossible task of defeating the Animal Crossing raccoon vendor character Tom Nook. The phrase stems from an email one Twitter user received from a professor in April 2020 in which the professor hopes their students have all "defeated Tom Nook" later admitting that the professor had never played it. The phrase circulated on Twitter parodying the impossible scenario of defeating the shopkeeper character.

Origin

On April 14th, 2020, Twitter user @chickpeamcb^[1] shared a screenshot of an email and captioned it, "It's 4:24 am and I was not prepared to read this sentence in an email from my professor" (shown below). The email reads: "I hope you're all doing well and that you've all defeated (?) Tom Nook (?) in Animal Crossing by now (I've never played Animal Crossing)." The tweet gained over 160,100 likes and 33,800 retweets in three days.

Spread

On April 14th, 2020, Twitter user @octolinghacker^[2] tweeted, "my mom just asked me if it is possible to defeat tom nook" (shown below, left). The tweet received over 136,900 likes and 18,500 retweets in three days. In the comments, @octolinghacker claimed to have shown their mother @chickpeamcb's tweet. That same day, Redditor degenbetz reposted @chickpeamcb's tweet to r/FellowKids^[3] and gained over 110 points (99% upvoted) in three days. Twitter user @angelmendoza___^[4] tweeted, "why are y’all trying so hard to defeat tom nook lmao he already has kids" (shown below, right). The tweet accumulated over 2,200 likes and 110 retweets in two days.

That day, Twitter user @mystarryfriends posted a video of people dancing down the street with the caption, "the animals when they defeat tom nook idk i never played it" (shown below). The Daily Dot^[5] published an article on Defeat Tom Nook tweets.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References