Anti-lawn Memes

About

Anti-lawn Memes or Anti-grass Memes refer to politically charged image macros, exploitables and videos that argue bio-diverse lawns with regionally native plants are more ecologically friendly, as well as more aesthetically pleasing than lawns that feature only trimmed green grass. Such memes have risen alongside an increase in anti-lawn sentiments on social media throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s.

Origin

An American movement against so-called "green carpet" lawns began growing in the latter half of the 1900s and continued growing through the 2000s. The grassroots anti-lawn organization Wild Ones was founded in 1979 by Lorrie Otto.^[1] The organization set out arguments that would come to be the main points of the anti-lawn movement: that trimmed green lawns are destructive to natural habitats, waste resources, introduce toxic chemicals into the Earth and enforce conformity. A 2015 drought in California emboldened the anti-lawn movement^[2] as maintaining green lawns expends 9 billion gallons of water a day, per the EPA's estimate.

The movement began growing more prominent on social media in 2019. On January 4th, 2019, the subreddit /r/NoLawns^[3] launched. It has gained over 52,000 members in just over three years. On March 4th, 2019, the Facebook page Green Memes for Communalist Dreams^[4] posted a Drakeposting meme championing a biodiverse lawn over a green grass lawn, gaining over 330 likes and reactions, as well as 220 shares in three years (shown below).

Spread

Over the following several years, anti-lawn memes began seeing increased prominence on social media. For example, on June 13th, 2020, Twitter user @notkinz^[5] posted a What If It Was Purple variation that gained over 13,000 retweets and 63,000 likes in roughly two years (shown below, left). On May 1st, 2022, Tumblr^[6] user headspace-hotel posted several anti-lawn memes, gaining over 69,000 notes in two days (example shown below, right).

Anti-lawn sentiment also began growing in video posts on TikTok and Instagram in the late 2010s and early 2020s. The #antilawn hashtag on TikTok has over 481,000 videos as of May 4th, 2022.^[7] Some high engagement videos under the hashtag include an August 24th, 2020, video by kill.kittie that gained over 45,000 likes in nearly two years (shown below, left) and a song by melbryantmusic posted April 24th, 2021, that gained over 17,000 likes in one year (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References