Get Stick Bugged Lol

About

Get Stick Bugged Lol refers to a series of bait-and-switch videos involving a swaying green stick bug. Typically, these clips begin with an unrelated subject that then rapidly changes, revealing the dancing bug set to different music. The meme exploded in popularity in late July 2020 on various platforms including Discord, iFunny, and Twitter.

Origin

On May 28th, 2018, a video of a stick bug swaying from side to side was uploaded to Twitter by user @Yone_R6 (shown below).^[1] In two years, the clip gained over 5.1 million views and 210,000 likes. The bug's swaying in the clip is a camouflage technique that stick bugs use to imitate twigs or leaves in the breeze.^[2]

ノリノリな虫おったわ…笑 pic.twitter.com/JMp8MHDOWP

— よね (@Yone_R6) May 28, 2018

On May 30th, 2018, YouTube user EliteTeamKiller uploaded a cropped version of the stick bug video set to the song "Some Cut" by hip-hop group Trillville (shown below).^[3] It gained over 760,000 views and 69,000 likes in less than three years.

According to Discord user YeetACookie, the "Get Stick Bugged Lol" caption was created on July 18th, 2020 by her friend Crunchy Dude, who combined the stick bug dancing video with the "Stick Bug" theme from the 2018 Roblox game Bee Swarm Simulator.^[4] The context for the meme was expained by a comment from YeetACake on this article:

The get stick bugged lol thing all started from me and a couple friends watching the original stick bug vid for an hour on mute while the stick bug song played in a discord call. My friend, Crunchy, made the OG caet get stick bugged lol on July 18th and we sent the caet vid to different discord servers because we found it funny. Me, Crunchy, and Yuri are overly obsessed with the song and sometimes still vibe to it, it's kind of like a mini cult and we shared our love of stick bug through a meme^[5]

After the video's creation, bait-and-switch versions were created by Crunchy Dude and shared to various Discord servers.^[5][6][7]

One of the first public uploads of Crunchy Dude's "Get Stick Bugged Lol" videos was on July 19th, 2020, by iFunny user Sect (shown below, left).^[8] The following day, iFunny user Insert uploaded the "caet" video YeetACookie referred to in her explanation of the meme, gaining over 1,100 smiles in two weeks (shown below, right).^[9]

The "Get Stick Bugged Lol" meme uses the "Stick Bug" theme from the 2018 Roblox game Bee Swarm Simulator (shown below).^[10]

Spread

The video without the bait-and-switch was uploaded to YouTube on July 24th, 2020 by user Stack Man, where it garnered over 45,000 views in under two weeks (shown below).^[11]

On July 25th, 2020, YouTuber The Last Mimiga uploaded an example using a scene from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure as a bait-and-switch, gaining over 5,500 views in a week (shown below, left).^[12] On July 28th, YouTuber beanfruit uploaded an example that opened with a clip from Minecraft, receiving more than 3,700 views in under a week (shown below, right).^[13]

On August 2nd, 2020, Twitter user pentaerythrit0l posted a Get Stick Bugged Lol video using the EA logo as a bait, gaining over 440,000 views and 66,000 likes in less than two days (shown below).^[14] Later that day, the clip was reposted to Instagramby user lordpooskin, garnering over 10,000 likes in less than 24 hours.^[15] It was also reposted to iFunny on the same day by user weebs, where it received over 3,400 likes and 83 comments in a similar period.^[16]

the secret meaning behind the EA logo pic.twitter.com/Ht4WLM2zeJ

— pentaerythritol (@pentaerythrit0l) August 2, 2020

Search Interest

External References