What’s a #PizzaRat?

Gretl Qiu, Staff Writer

Recently, the term “pizzarat” has overwhelmed the Internet. What’s a Pizza Rat? And where does this term come from?

This started when an accountant named Matt Little uploaded a video to YouTube. This video captures a mouse dragging down a huge slice of pizza down the stairs in Manhattan subway. This is just a 14 second clip. But why is it so popular, having 7 million views on YouTube?

Let’s see…First of all, this incident happened in New York—which is a big metropolis, so it definitely attracts more attention. Second of all, this is not an everyday scene for many people, and it just makes this more interesting to them.

People have different reflections after seeing this video; some comments under the video say that “His inspiration was Ratatouille,” or “You see a rat… I see a hard working father trying to feed his teenage turtles.” Some see the Pizza Rat as motivational because the Pizza Rat is small, but it’s carrying an enormous slice of pizza. Some viewers see the Pizza Rat as themselves, working hard in New York in order to survive. On the other hand, some commenters are much more realistic, simply saying that this scene implies that the New York Subway is too dirty and needs to be cleaned right away.

All in all, this video indeed swamped the internet, inspiring hundreds of thousands of comments, as per usual in this technologically advanced era.