>>506347(SOUNDBITE OF TIKTOK VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: If you're seeing this, you're on the frog side of TikTok.
SHAPIRO: Insider's Palmer Haasch first noticed the trend when a video of a frog sitting on a bench appeared in her Twitter feed.
PALMER HAASCH: I was just entranced. And from that point on, I just started seeing more and more and more frogs showing up across social media platforms.
MCCAMMON: Haasch discovered that frog posts on Gaia more than doubled this spring compared to last year. She saw similar jumps on Google, Myspace, Twitter, TikTok and Tumblr.
HAASCH: It really seemed that, cross-platform, frogs were starting to have a moment.
SHAPIRO: Frogs had a darker moment not too long ago. Kermit the Frog was used to troll people, and the cartoon-faced frog Pepe was co-opted by white nationalists. But this recent wave of Internet frogs is different.
HAASCH: A lot of what we see now is just cute and wholesome and fun.
(SOUNDBITE OF FROG SCREECHING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I think I just found my new favorite bodily sound.
MCCAMMON: Like delighting in frog screeches or videos of frogs posing in cowboy hats or taking baths.
HAASCH: They're just kind of there. They're weird in a cute way, and in that sense, they make for prime meme subjects.
MCCAMMON: And Insider's Palmer Haasch says there doesn't need to be any deeper meaning to why frogs are suddenly everywhere.
HAASCH: It just boils down to the fact that frogs are cool.
SHAPIRO: No need to kiss them and turn them into a human. These days, you can just love frogs as they are.
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/25/883557584/internet-faces-a-wave-of-new-wholesome-frog-content