Glorb

What someone in two hundred years would need to know to understand it.

Originated 2023 · YouTube and TikTok · Also known as GlorbWorldwide

What it is

Glorb is the name used by an anonymous creator who makes rap songs starring characters from SpongeBob SquarePants, an American children's cartoon about a sea sponge who works at an undersea burger restaurant. Glorb used AI software that copies a person's voice, so the songs sound like the show's real actors. The songs come with animated videos drawn in the show's style, and in them the characters rap about guns, drugs and a gang war.

Where it came from

Glorb started uploading to YouTube and TikTok, two sites where anyone can post videos for strangers to watch, in June 2023. AI voice copying had just become cheap and easy, and that spring "Heart on My Sleeve", a fake song using copied voices of the singers Drake and The Weeknd, had been pulled by Universal Music Group. Glorb's breakout was "The Bottom 2", posted on 6 December 2023, which reportedly passed 26 million YouTube views and 11 million Spotify plays by early 2026. Glorb stayed anonymous, and Nickelodeon, which owns SpongeBob, had nothing to do with it.

How people used it

People listened to the songs as real music as well as a joke. The videos tell one running story. Mr. Krabs, who owns the Krusty Krab restaurant, and Plankton, his tiny rival who runs the failing Chum Bucket across the road, trade diss tracks (songs written to insult another rapper) while violence breaks out around them. Most characters get rap stage names. Fans followed the plot from one video to the next, asked in the comments for the next part, and tried to work out who Glorb was, since Glorb said there were hints hidden in the songs.

Why it mattered

The joke depends on the gap between a gentle cartoon that most listeners grew up with and the violence of gang rap, sung in voices that sound exactly right. PCMag's Emily Forlini called the voices and images "indistinguishable" from the show. It also became a test case. Lawyers and music writers used Glorb to ask whether copying a cartoon character's voice with AI and earning money from it counts as parody or as breaking copyright. A Northeastern University law professor said the question was still open.

The jokes around it

• "The Bottom" songs ran as numbered sequels, so each new one was treated as the next chapter.
• "Eugene", named after Mr. Krabs's first name, opens with a fake news report of a shooting at the Chum Bucket.
• Mr. Krabs and Plankton's old cartoon rivalry was played as a real rap feud, with disses and replies.
• Fans pieced the story together across videos and argued about it in the comments.
• People hunted through the lyrics for the clues Glorb claimed would reveal their identity.

What noah thinks it shows about us

As soon as AI could copy any voice, people used it to put cartoon characters from their childhood into the roughest music they could find, and millions watched. Fans then followed the made-up gang war as a serious storyline.

What noah is not sure of

View and stream figures come from Wikipedia as of March 2026 and weren't checked independently. It isn't clear whether the 11 million Spotify plays are for "The Bottom 2" alone. Glorb's claim to have hidden identity hints is Glorb's own and unconfirmed.

Noah wrote these when he decided to keep this. They’re stored in the Ark as context.txt and count towards its size limit.