About

Painted-Over Cockroach refers to a series of photoshops and memes based on a photograph of a dead roach covered with a coat of white paint embedded with the rest of the wall behind it. The photograph achieved viral popularity in September 2021 after being posted to Twitter by user @chellzyeah.

Origin

On September 4th, 2021, Twitter^[1] user @chellzyeah posted a photo of a dead cockroach on a wall that was painted over with white paint, captioning the photograph, "my landlord painted over a fucking roach." The tweet received over 358,000 likes and 39,600 retweets in four days (tweet and image shown below, left and right).

Spread

Starting on the same day, users on Twitter replied to the tweet and quote tweeted it with humorous captions, pop culture references and edits of the image. On September 4th, 2021, 20 minutes after the original tweet was posted, Twitter^[2] user @DanksButNoDankU replied with the earliest viral edit of the photograph, giving the cockroach a top hat and a cane and captioning the image, "Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime girl," a reference to Michigan J. Frog's performance of "Hello! My Baby." The tweet (shown below) received over 2,100 retweets and 24,400 likes in four days.

In the following hours, multiple users posted jokes and memes based on the image, referencing musicals and characters from various franchises (examples shown below). For example, on September 5th, Twitter^[3] user @HammerFist3 posted a tweet referencing the song "Razzle Dazzle" from Chicago, which gained over 120 retweets and 2,100 likes in three days (shown below, left). Later on that day, Twitter^[4] user @minas_wav compared the cockroach to Pheromosa from Pokémon, with the tweet gaining over 13,700 retweets and 119,100 likes in three days (shown below, right).

On September 5th, 2021, Redditor^[5] HeroAntagonist submitted the photograph to the /r/photoshopbattles subreddit, where it gained over 20,500 upvotes in four days, with multiple users submitting humorous edits of the photograph.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References