A new TikTok trend is cracking people up…literally. In the viral “watch my egg” prank, which first originated in September 2025, users text friends or family an egg emoji (🥚) and ask them to “watch it” while they’re away.

What happens next depends on the recipient’s imagination: the egg hatches into a chick, a wolf emoji appears, and chaos ensues. Some “eggsitters” valiantly protect their charge, while others lie about letting it die, prompting one viral comment to declare, “not him gaslighting you.”

The silly text-based challenge has spread across TikTok and Instagram, delighting users with how differently people respond to a seemingly simple request.

What does the “watch my egg” trend involve?

The watch my egg trend is pretty simple: send someone an egg emoji (🥚) via text and ask them to look after it for you while you go away. Then, show the egg hatching (🐣🐥), before being chased by a wolf (🐺…..🐥), who gradually gets closer and closer to your newborn chick.

The next part is up to you to decide, but at the end, return and ask your chosen babysitter how your egg is doing. 

Next step (optional but advised): post the results to TikTok for thousands to see.

A pretty standard response can be seen in this video here by @luckylittlelisalou, which received over 1 million views. She tries the prank on her son, asking, “Can you watch my egg?” before leaving the chat. The egg hatches, and a wolf appears, to which the eggsitter responds, “NOO” and, “SHOO”, before a skull appears next to the chick, and it disappears.

“I’m back. How’s the egg?” the mom responds, only for her son to send a screenshot of their earlier messages, having deleted all of the texts where the egg was killed by the wolf. “It’s right there!”

@luckylittlelisalou Tried the egg trend on my son… 🤔 #eggtrend ♬ Carmen Habanera, classical opera(1283412) – perfectpanda

“Not him gaslighting you,” one person commented.

“I’m impressed he actually answered your texts. My egg would be a fossil by the time my kids answered me,” Zoraida Torres admitted, while someone else added, “Tried it, my kid sent me this 🍳”

A similar reaction can be seen in this video here, where the person watching the egg simply sends the 🚫emoji, and fails to protect the egg, but once again lies about it.

Not everyone lets the wolf get away with it so easily, though. Take this video, for example, by @tkellyy98, where someone asks their dad to be the eggkeeper.

@tkellyy98 I asked my dad to watch my egg 😂 #watchmyegg #babysit #eggtrend #fyp #canyouwatch ♬ original sound – dumpofalexis._

“Oh boy… you stay right there little fella. Mom will be right back,” the dad says as his daughter leaves the chat, before sending a dog emoji to protect the egg.

“Back off buddy, we don’t want any problems,” he says, as the wolf appears, before pulling out another emoji in defence. “🔫I said back off” “Not one more step.” This time the wolf is killed, and as the daughter returns, the dad says everything is, “All good, little fella is chillin now.”

“My dad would have just done a 👍” wrote Kelsey_rhea.

“He took being a grandpa seriously,” added Y.

Where did the trend come from?

From people adding a plot twist that the wolf was also their pet, to unprepared boyfriends telling the hatched egg to “go back in”, the trend continues to play out in silly and unexpected ways. But where did it actually come from?

“Watch my egg” seems to have originated sometime in early to mid September, 2025 before quickly spreading across TikTok and onto other apps like Instagram. While it’s entirely original, it harkens back to old texting pranks and games that have existed on the internet since its conception.

One example includes texting your dating app matches song lyrics, and waiting for them to catch on—such as this person, whose Tinder match was seemingly the one person on earth who hadn’t heard Bohemian Rhapsody.
This prank in itself likely evolved from the earlier iteration of finding random people on Facebook with names that sound like songs, and sending them lyrics (think DMing clueless boomers called Mag Earle or Shandy Leer.)

As for keeping an egg/chicken alive, a similar example can be found in The Password Game, an online game where you have to create a password that fits with an increasingly difficult and ridiculous set of rules, including everything from roman numerals to the daily phase of the moon.

Think The Impossible Quiz for the modern internet era. At Rule 17, the player is asked to look after Paul, an egg, and incorporate him into their password. Eventually Paul hatches into a chicken, and the rest of the game is spent trying to feed him and keep him safe from various hazards, while making sure your password has the right characters.
Compared to that, watching your friend’s egg via text seems fairly easy. Most likely, it’s trending because we need something lighthearted atm, and ultimately it’s just a load of harmless fun for everyone involved (except for the egg, obvs.)

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