A fresh week, a fresh meme to fill the endless void of doom scrolling.
The “would you still love me if I was a worm” meme isn’t necessarily all that fresh, but it’s returning to public attention once again as women everywhere test their partner’s love with the most random, out of left field question they can muster. After several years of fluctuating popularity, the oddball meme is once again back in the spotlight, and spreading to fresh social media platforms in the process.
What is the “would you still love me if I was a worm” meme?
Of all the random, eccentric memes to’ve been birthed by the internet, this one is among the most self-explanatory. It’s essentially exactly what it sounds like — a deeply anxious, middle of the night concern that somehow transformed into a full-blown trend.
Plenty of people experience intrusive thoughts in the wee hours of the morning, and — for some of us, at least — these often spur moments of anxiety. From there, it’s a quick journey to “no one actually likes you” and “everyone is just pretending” — thoughts that far too often cloud our minds in uneasy moments. Women — not exclusively, but more commonly — suffer from this spiral of negative thinking, leaving their poor partners to be ambushed by strange, seemingly pointless questions exactly like this one.
That’s where this meme originated. In an odd, but surprisingly relatable, tweet from 2019. The tweet in question, penned by @shutyourhell, lays out a strange but familiar scenario, in which our OP awakens in the middle of the night, distraught over the idea that their partner would not love them if they were a worm.
It soon transformed into a beast all its own, and became a cringy meme and sidelong joke about women’s intrusive thoughts and the impossible-to-traverse hoops they make their partners jump through. Answering a question like “would you still love me if I was a worm” is a minefield, for many, and that’s exactly what the meme aims to illustrate. For several years it persisted as a fringe meme, largely only referenced in specific circles, before its arrival on TikTok breathed new vigor into the worm discussion.
The rise of the worm meme on TikTok
The worm meme arrived on TikTok in 2020, with one video, in particular, pushing the trend to prominence. That video came from user @ninzzx, and sees her asking her mother if she would still love her “if one day you woke up and I was a worm.” Her mother’s hilarious response gave the worm meme fresh life, and sparked a wave of similar videos to trend on the platform. Quickly, the target of the worm question shifted from parents and friends to partners, and the trend changed course ever so slightly. It became a way for women to “subtly” test their partner’s attraction to them, outside of the physical, and picked up prominence across several social media platforms.
The most popular of which was most certainly TikTok, where the meme experienced a high point through 2021 and into 2022. Eventually, fresh animals arrived as substitutes for the titular worm, and saw women asking their partners if they would still be loved as a fly, or a cockroach, or a bird. Then, the meme underwent yet another transformation after the singular Heidi Klum sauntered in and seized the reins.
The Heidi Klum effect
The meme’s zenith arrived on the flawlessly in-fashion coat tails of model and businesswoman Heidi Klum. After fading significantly through 2022, the meme experienced a sudden and stark resurgence thanks to Klum’s 2022 Halloween costume. The 49-year-old sauntered into her own Halloween party dressed as a startlingly realistic worm. The resulting images gave a new injection of vigor to the overarching “would you still love me if I was this deeply unappealing creature” trend, due in large part to their general status as nightmare fuel. Klum managed to bring the meme full circle, somehow, by embodying it completely and proving that yes — even as a worm — we still love Heidi Klum.