The “Snail of Death” Question Is Trending Again and Tiktok Is Obsessed
Oct. 22 2021, Published 2:48 p.m. ET
Popular video-sharing app TikTok is chock-full of different trends and challenges that range from inducing second-hand embarrassment to making you wonder: Just how the heck did they do that?
And then there are posts that prompt other users on the platform to share their own personality traits by indulging in "telling" quizzes, or philosophical postulations that supposedly reveal people's true dispositions. But is that what the snail trend is all about?
What is the "snail trend" on TikTok?
No, the trend that involves the slimy little buggers isn't about whether or not someone would eat escargot, it's actually a hypothetical scenario that poses the following: Would you take the gift of immortality and a huge sum of cash under the condition that there's a killer snail that follows you forever and when it finally touches you, you die? And if you did, how would you handle it?
"The Immortal Snail" question has trended multiple times in the past and since many TikTokers have enjoyed sizable followings by regurgitating several popular internet trends and memes, it didn't take long for folks to start using the "Immortal Snail" hypothetical to create a whole new slew of posts, jokes, and even other hypotheses.
Many of these memes and clips were posted with the assumption that the viewer was cognizant of the snail theory in question, which led to a slew of people scratching their heads and wondering just why the heck everyone on TikTok was referencing snails.
Naturally, TikTokers had a bunch of different reactions to how they would handle "The Immortal Snail" question.
Some folks said that they would try to win the snail over and become its friend, seeing as the two of them were immortal and could keep one another company.
Others said that they would gladly take the money and the gift of infinite life because, at the end of the day, they're just dealing with a snail.
Then there were some who said they'd ship the snail away. It would be pretty easy to trap it in a box with a GPS tracker or in a tiny room somewhere with a camera so that you could check in on the snail at any time. The possibilities are endless, really.
And if you ever got tired of being alive, you could always just let the snail touch you and boom, there's the end of that whole "immortality is a curse" thing.
The snail question has become such a hot trend on TikTok that folks are even going so far as to alter their profile pictures and descriptions around the hypothetical question.
As mentioned above, "The Immortal Snail" has had many lives (fittingly enough) on the internet, including on Reddit. The post posing the question received more than 40,000 upvotes and had tons of people commenting on how they would handle the scenario.
The OG question was as follows: "You and a super intelligent snail both get $1 million, and you both become immortal. However, you die if the snail touches you. It always knows where you are and slowly crawls toward you. What's your plan?"
I think dirkson's response above is about the best strategy there is.
