Tentacle erotica, or shokushu goukan, is a subgenre of Japanese adult media that has become a widespread internet meme used to represent the bizarre or unexpected turns often found in anime. While its modern popularity grew in the 1980s as a creative way to navigate Japanese censorship laws regarding the depiction of anatomy, its artistic roots date back to the 1814 woodblock print 'The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife' by Hokusai. In meme culture, the trope is frequently used to express shock, the feeling of being 'blindsided' by weird content, or to poke fun at the increasingly absurd plot devices used in various media. It serves as a shorthand for the 'internet being weird' and is often applied to situations where things escalate in an unpredictable or non-sensical direction.