Phrog

About

Phrog refers to a video of a bullfrog sitting on an edge of a bench in an upright, human-like pose. In April 2019, the video gained popularity on Instagram following a popular edit in which the footage combined with song Kid Cudi by Playboi Carti, with the trend later expanding to include similar videos of frogs.

Origin

On June 21st, 2012, YouTube user Mike Hanna posted a video of a bullfrog sitting on an edge of a bench in an upright position, titled "Frog relaxing" (shown below).^[1] The video gained over 9,000 views as of April 29th, 2019 and reached over 550,000 views by May 16th, 2019.

Spread

On December 26, 2018, Redditor xazera submitted a video of another frog sitting upright to r/okbuddyretard subreddit, combined with a slowed down version of Brawl Stars OST Battle 2 composition.^[8] The post gained 46 upvotes in four months.

On February 10th, Instagram user imbacile posted the video, combined with the footage of another frog jumping from a ledge. The post gained over 1,400 views and 450 likes in four months.^[14] In the following days, imbacile made two additional posts using images of the frog.^[15][16]

On March 27, 2019, Instagram user @long.testicles uploaded several videos^[9] frogs sitting upright combined with rap music, with the post gaining over 1,500 likes (shown below). In the post description, @long.testicles mentioned that the videos were previously posted on "his old page".

On April 8th, 2019, Twitter user @uzidorr created an edit in which one of the videos, captioned "This some real shit you wouldn't know about", was combined with the song "Kid Cudi" by rapper Playboi Carti.^[17] On April 11th, 2019, Twitter user @bloutgoggles tweeted the edit (shown below).^[2] The tweet received over 6,400 retweets and 16,200 likes in three weeks.

Phrog

The word "Phrog" was coined by Instagram user swanton.mp4^[13] on April 22nd, 2019. On that day, swanton.mp4 posted an edit of the video captioned "PHROG", combined with the song "Passionfruit" by Drake (YouTube reupload shown below; another song used due to copyright issues).^[3] The post gained over 24,800 views and 6,400 likes in one week.

In the following week, swanton.mp4 and other Instagram users posted more edits, both based on the original footage and similar videos featuring frogs.^[4][5] For example, a post made by Instagram user dildoger on April 27th, 2019, gained over 13,900 views and 3,300 likes in three days (shown below).^[6] Additionally, multiple Phrog edits were featured by a popular Snapchat meme account xo trayvon vert,^[10] including edits by Instagram users @nehmyy^[11] and @fr1ck.mp4,^[12] prompting the further spread of the meme.

On April 28th, Redditor zaylte posted the video to /r/okbuddyretard subreddit, titling the post "cock worship".^[7] The post gained over 10,700 upvotes in two days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References