- Netflix released its original series “Squid Game,” a Korean drama about a deadly game, this month.
- The hashtag #squidgame has amassed 11.1 billion views on TikTok and is full of memes about the show.
- People are parodying games from the series like “red light, green light.”
A wave of memes based on the
Netflix
original South Korean drama “Squid Game,” and the twisted children’s games it features, are going viral on TikTok, with users reenacting dramatizations of games like “red light, green light.”
“Squid Game” premiered on Netflix on September 17 and has since risen to the number one position in the United States, per Netflix’s own public ranking. The show, a Korean-language drama, is about a group of people who, having exhausted their economic options, decide to join a game series that promises a major jackpot.
But there’s a twist: losing a game means that you’ll be killed.
Outside of that specific sound, the hashtag #squidgame has amassed a staggering 11.1 billion views on TikTok, and is filled with memes, clips, and fan edits of characters from the show.
The “red light, green light” game from the first episode of the show is the driving force behind many of the memes on TikTok. “Red light, green light” is a children’s game in which one person commands those behind them to run (green light) and hold still (red light), and eliminates those who move during a red light phase.
The “Squid Game” episode features the Korean iteration of the game, which per the Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture is known as mugunghwa kochi pieotsumnida (무궁화 꽃이 피었습니다). But in the show, a giant animatronic girl calls out commands for players to run and stop, and if it catches them moving, the animatronic immediately triggers a gun to shoot them, eliminating the player.
Many of the videos are concentrated under a sound uploaded by TikTok user @yovincaprafika that clips the animatronic saying “mugunghwa kochi pieotsumnida.” The sound has been used in over 200,000 videos, with people using it to act out scenarios of how they’d act in the game.
Others on TikTok are attempting the non-deadly version of the second game from the show, attempting to cut a shape out of dalgona candy (or honeycomb toffee), which is a popular South Korean street food also known as ppopgi (뽑기). As Insider previously reported, some vendors will give you a free piece if you can stencil the shape out of the candy without breaking it.
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