Slang has a habit of taking a simple, familiar word and bending its meaning into something completely different. Cooked is a clean example — nothing to do with actual food, and everything to do with being in trouble, usually the kind there's no obvious way out of.
What cooked actually means
Saying someone or something is cooked means they're in serious trouble — a situation that looks doomed, hopeless, or beyond saving. It plays on the idea of something being finished, done, unable to go back to how it was before, similar to how food that's fully cooked can't return to its raw state.
The range of situations it covers
The phrase gets used across wildly different stakes. It shows up for genuinely serious situations — someone about to face real consequences for something — but just as often for much lower-stakes moments, like forgetting an assignment due the next morning or being in an obviously losing position during a casual game with friends.
How the phrase is typically used
"You're cooked" is one of the most common forms, usually aimed playfully at a friend who's clearly about to face some kind of setback, whether serious or trivial. 
A black and white cat with a mustache is looking at the camera with a caption that says... — view on SoundGIFs It works as both a genuine warning and a lighthearted tease, depending entirely on tone and context.
Self-deprecating use
People also apply the phrase to themselves — "I'm so cooked" after realizing a mistake or a bad decision, often used half-jokingly even when the actual consequences are fairly minor. This self-aware, exaggerated use is a big part of why the term feels casual rather than genuinely alarming most of the time.
Why cooked feels more dramatic than similar phrases
Compared to older, more neutral phrases like "done for" or "finished," cooked carries a slightly heightened, almost theatrical tone, which fits the general style of a lot of recent internet slang — exaggerated language used partly for genuine meaning and partly for comedic effect.
A word that works in almost any context
Part of what makes cooked so widely used is its flexibility. It fits equally well in a serious conversation about real consequences and in a joking comment about losing a video game, without needing any real adjustment to how it's phrased.
Related slang worth knowing
Cooked sits alongside other doom-and-gloom internet slang describing hopeless situations, including terms like what is the its so over were so back meme cycle, which captures a related but more back-and-forth version of the same dramatic, exaggerated tone.
Conclusion
Cooked is a short, flexible way of saying a situation looks hopeless, used just as often as a joke among friends as it is for genuinely serious trouble. For more slang and meme terms explained clearly, browse SoundGIFs' full News section.