A fan-made animation of the 'red light, green light' girl from Netflix's 'Squid Game' went viral and sparked a new meme
"Squid Game," a Korean-language Netflix original, has inspired a flood of memes online.
A fan-made animation of the show's "red light, green light" girl reached over 45 million views.
Fans are now editing K-pop tracks and other famous songs over the clip.
Netflix's "Squid Game" has made a huge splash on social media, with memes about the show taking over TikTok. Now, a fan's animated video of the show's "red light, green light" animatronic girl dancing has become a meme of its own, with K-pop fans editing their favorite artists' songs over the clip.
"Squid Game" is a Netflix original series that premiered on September 17. Produced in South Korea, the show follows a group of adults who, facing dire economic need and staggering debts, enter a survival game in which they compete in children's games for a cash prize. There's a twist, though - if they fail a game, they'll be killed.
The show is on track to become Netflix's biggest non-English language series of all time, if not the platform's most-viewed original series ever, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said at the annual Code Conference on Monday.
A TikTok video posted by user @punyaibenk shows the animatronic girl from the series' first episode who presides over a game of a mugunghwa kochi pieotsumnida (무궁화 꽃이 피었습니다), a Korean game similar to "red light, green light" in which players stop and go at someone's command, waving her arms and dancing.
The post includes several hashtags (#3danimation and #blender3d) that suggest it's an original animation, referencing the 3D animation software Blender.
@punyaibenk ##squidgame ##dance ##3danimation ##blender3d
♬ Squid Game - Green Light Red Light - Yovinca Prafika
The video was posted on September 25 and has amassed over 45 million views on TikTok. It's since spread to Twitter, where people - mostly accounts that appear to be run by K-pop fans - are editing songs from their favorite artists over a cropped version of @punyaibenk's TikTok.
It's unclear exactly where the meme started on Twitter. Reposts of @punyaibenk's video crossed over to Twitter on September 25, and meme iterations of it began to circulate on Sunday, a day after it was originally posted. Now, fans are posting videos overlaying the music of K-pop groups like Girls' Generation, EXO, and LOONA over a cropped version of @punyaibenk's video.
-ًr (@soshyul) September 27, 2021
-& VIVI ⸰ 𖥔 ͙ࣳ (@vivinfluence) September 28, 2021
-RYE 🐧🌹 (@nonStopKSoo_) September 28, 2021
The meme has spread out of K-pop fandom as well, with people layering other tracks like "La Jeune Fille en Feu" (from the French film "Portrait of a Lady on Fire") over the clip.
-in my garance marillier phase (@womansbathtube) September 28, 2021
The animatronic girl has become one of the most iconic images from the show, appearing in a marketing exhibit for the show at Itaewon Station in Seoul, South Korea, a mall in Manila, the Phillippines, and in countless memes online.
-Netflix Philippines (@Netflix_PH) September 22, 2021
The first season of "Squid Game" is currently available to stream on Netflix.
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