Crazy? I Was Crazy Once. They Locked Me In A Room. A Rubber Room. A Rubber Room ... — Wimpy Kid style drawing of a character in bed with a thought bubble

Crazy? I Was Crazy Once. They Locked Me In A Room. A Rubber Room. A Rubber Room ...

2002copypastaclassic

Published November 14, 2026

Crazy? I Was Crazy Once... is a looping copypasta drawn from a playground chain rhyme where each line hands its last word to the next verse, stacking rooms, rubber walls, and rats forever. Everything2 user 3Suns filed a version in March 2002 under 'songs designed to annoy,' and by May 2018 streamer Kryoz was reciting the loop to a PUBG audience of hundreds of thousands.

copypasta memes call and response memes pre digital memes streamer memes absurdist humor memes

Overview

Every verse ends on the word that opens the next, so 'crazy' leads to a rubber room, the room leads to rats, and rats loop back to crazy, producing a chant with no exit1. Common swaps replace rats with ducks, bugs, or worms, and longer renditions stack dying, being buried, and brain-eating worms before resetting to the opening line3. Reciters time the rhythm either to bug a sibling or to perform absurdity aloud, which matches the 'songs designed to annoy' category used for the earliest known internet version1.

Blog author briegonda recalled chanting a 'Bugs? I hate bugs' variant as a child and admitted it bothered other kids more than her2. The ScaryForKids site files it as a 'funny scary poem' passed through schoolyards, which lines up with the pre-internet playground lineage that most posters point to3. Visual meme versions on Reddit later paired the text with cartoon panels and TV screenshots4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Everything2 (2002 text) / Reddit and YouTube (viral spread)
Date
2002

The oldest documented internet appearance comes from a March 30, 2002, submission by user 3Suns on Everything2.com, categorized under 'songs designed to annoy'1. A Reddit commenter writing as /u/Faremir later claimed the verse can be traced back to a 1996 Usenet thread on alt.support.depression, although that attribution has not been independently confirmed7.

Bloggers and the ScaryForKids editors agree the chain-rhyme itself predates the web, moving through North American playgrounds for decades before anyone typed it into a forum23.

How It Spread

On October 16, 2007, YouTuber Scarlet Grunt recited the verse in a short clip that reached over 140,000 views5. Written versions resurfaced on WordPress in April 2015, when briegonda reworked the loop as a 'bugs drive me crazy' memoir2, and on ScaryForKids in November 2015 under a longer six-stanza rendition that adds worms burrowing into the narrator's skull3.

Reddit picked up the piece through r/copypasta in October 2016 with a 'ducks' variant6 and again in November 2017 with a 'rats make him crazy' retelling7. Streamer Kryoz posted a PUBG clip titled 'Crazy? I was crazy once. They locked me in a room' on May 18, 2018, which later passed 700,000 views8.

Later that year, /u/Alex_Krapanos claimed authorship of a 2008 schoolyard draft on r/Poems and drew the Usenet counter-claim in replies9. Redditor /u/OwenPotatoKing turned the copypasta into a visual meme on r/LodedDiper in December 2018, where it collected over 100 upvotes10.

Timeline

2002-03-30

Everything2 user 3Suns files a version of the rhyme under the category 'songs designed to annoy,' the oldest known internet copy[1].

2007-10-16

YouTuber Scarlet Grunt uploads a recitation that later passes 140,000 views[5].

2016-10

An r/copypasta user posts a 'ducks I hate ducks' retelling of the loop[6].

2017-11

An r/copypasta post titled 'and rats make him crazy' recirculates the verse in third person[7].

Frequently Asked Questions