Nov 6, 2019 11:37 AM

The Real Meaning Behind Arson Frog

The absurd meme says a lot about generational divides. OK, boomer?

It all started with a joke about tacos. TikTok user @tinymeatgang69699 posted a clip of someone wheeze-scream-laughing at an array of kitschy framed signs in what seems to be a home goods store, one of which reads “Thank goodness I don’t have to hunt my own food. I don’t even know where tacos live.” Commenters—who, because of TikTok’s demographics, are most likely to be teenage members of Generation Z—resoundingly pronounced the jokes “boomer humor.” One user, @matherfukr (kids these days!), came to baby boomer comedy’s defense. “I mean to be fair these are actually jokes,” they wrote. “Half of Gen Z would laugh if someone took a picture of frog, colored it blue and wrote arson under it.”

That @matherfukr was right. TikTok user @heyitssneha “did god’s work” and made the image a reality, allegedly (believably) at 2:30 am. Now Arson Frog is a TikTok sensation, gracing many a profile picture and user name, inspiring fan art, and prompting questions from confused “old millennials” on Reddit and head-scratching shoutouts from Twitterati. There’s no reason to it. “Getting” the joke is a surrender to winsome absurdity, groupthink with no real think at all, only 🤡. Which is interesting, and maybe necessary, because Arson Frog is an offshoot of one of the bitterest memes Gen Z has given the internet: “OK, boomer.”

Members of Gen Z were born, at the earliest, in the mid-1990s. They’re coming of age in a world wracked by war and political unrest, soaring economic disparity and student loans, and climate change. At least online, members of Gen Z, and the neighboring millennial generation, blame baby boomers for the state of the globe they’re about to inherit. And a share of baby boomers, at least online, see Gen Z and millennials as entitled, participation-trophy-toting snowflakes, or, somewhat more generously, poor office workers.

Some credit a viral rant about younger generations and participation trophies with starting the "ok, boomer" phenomenon, but its origins are nebulous. It’s been brewing for a long time. In the 2010s, there was Old Economy Steve, a man with a 1970s haircut who does things like get a job after graduating college. For years now, there have been articles about millennials killing off industries (like diamonds, and restaurants, and napkins, and mayo) that older generations hold dear, and subsequent jokes about baby boomers killing the economy. In the hands of TikTok and Twitter, the joke and the frustrations that underpin it have been reduced down to just two little words.

Olds railing against Youths, and vice versa, is a tale as old as reproduction. What’s strange about intergenerational conflict now is that it’s so broad. It’s not disgruntled parents carping about mop tops, or hippies, or yuppies, or goths, or emo/scene kids, or VSCO girls, though people certainly do still criticize specific aspects of youth culture. Instead, generations are talked about like astrological signs now—arbitrary labels that, once applied, are meant to sum a person up by way of making sweeping generalizations. Often, the “boomers” Gen Z and millennials aim to burn are members of the Silent Generation or Gen X. Boomer really just means someone resistant to change, just like snowflake really means someone you’ve offended.

If there is a meaningful difference between today’s whippersnappers and graybeards, it’s how they’ve responded to being lampooned by the other. The more boomers (real or figurative) rage, the more younger generations sublimate their anger beneath layers of irony and absurdity. Arson Frog is wacky fun, but it’s also an image of a friendly-looking frog telling you, in no uncertain terms, to burn it all down.

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