What was the meaning behind the snail and man joke?

My interpretation of it is if you are to get rid of your enemies, make sure you see it through to the end because they or another one will just pop back up. If you send a drug dealer to prison, once he gets out he will just pick up where he left off, or in the meantime another will take his place, which was the symbolism behind the snail coming back to the porch.

Theres another popular interpretation that you should be careful of who you do wrong to because they will remember and it'll come back to haunt you, foreshadowing what happens to Alonzo as a result of his actions in Vegas.

If Ari Gold saw Chappie he would say:
"Chappie makes Elysium look like Citizen ƒvcking Kane"

I always thought he was just messing with him because he knew he was high

Everyone wants to come up with these complicated interpretations, i think its simple, the streets are rough, unfair and unforgiving. The streets offer no hope to the weak. Thats all there is too it.

Was Hoyt the snail? Alonzo threw him to the Latino gang, and Hoyt made his way back.

So in the story, a guy kicks a snail, breaks its shell, and almost kills it. Then after a year of crawling, the snail finds its way back, and the owner says, “The F is your problem?”

I think the critical part of the story is statement, “The F is your problem?”

The question indicates that the person does not recall that he kicked the snail and injured it. He feels the snail is coming up to him unprovoked. He totally forgot about what he did, kicking the poor snail; but the snail didn’t forget.

The message is that, in the streets, people do bad stuff to other people all the time, to the extent they they forget those they have hurt. But the people who suffered the harm never forget the injury, just like the snail who crawled for an entire year to get back to the guy who kicked it. So the person on the street will have enemies on all sides without even knowing that most of those enemies even exist.

Alonzo’s end sorta captures that story. He didn’t realize that there were lots of people who didn’t like him, who were his enemies. Like Smiley’s decision to spare Jake, which implies that he wasn’t too hot about Alonzo. The people at the jungle also turned on him when they could’ve easily saved him.