Big Floppa

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About

Big Floppa or simply Floppa refers to a series of ironic memes based on photographs of a caracal named Gregory, and sometimes photographs of other medium-sized cats. Originally circulated among ironic Instagram meme accounts starting in late December 2019, the meme gained more widespread popularity online starting in May 2020.

Origin

On December 23rd, 2019, Instagram^[1] user prozhony posted a photograph of his pet caracal named Gregory (Гоша) and another cat lying on a window sill. The image received over 16,600 views in six months (largely due to its meme popularity).

In late December 2019, a collective of Instagram ironic meme accounts, including users big_sahnr^[6] and dogie.official^[15] started posting memes based on the image (posts no longer available), initially referring to the caracal as "sahnr" and "big sahnr" (coined by Instagram user pantothepizza). In late January 2020, now-inactive Instagram user young.taxi coined the name "Floppa" or "Big Floppa," posting memes featuring the caracal, with fellow accounts adopting the name.

On February 14th, 2020, Instagram^[2] user tfosing (previously esoteric.irony) posted a demotivational poster based on the photograph captioned "FLOP Exclusive" (shown below, left), which is the earliest currently available meme based on the image of the caracal. The post received over 120 likes in four months and was reposted and modified by other ironic accounts on the same day, including posts by pantothepizza^[3] and floppa.official^[4] (shown below, right).

Spread

The meme did not see significant spread outside of ironic meme pages until April 2020. During the February – April 2020 period, ironic Instagram pages such as tfosing,^[5] big_sahnr,^[6] pantothepizza^[7], dogie.official^[17] and others posted "floppa" memes, using the word to refer to the caracal as well as other medium-sized and small cats such as lynxes and servals. On March 24th, tfosing (esoteric.irony) posted^[8] an edit featuring several clips of a Gregory the Caracal and a serval being pet, captioned "HOW THE F--K IS IT SO SOFT" (reupload shown below). The post received over 1,100 views and 260 likes in three months. On March 25th, Instagram^[9] user hambubrger reposted the meme, gaining over 38,100 views and 2,700 likes in the same period. On April 6th, 2020, iFunny^[10] account ShitpostSanctuary reposted the meme, gaining 75 smiles.

Prior to April 16th, 2020, an unknown user posted an ironic demotivational meme captioned "Big Floppa Flop fo no hoe" (shown below). On April 16th, Twitter^[11] user @pawpawchan48 made the earliest known repost of the meme, gaining 55 retweets and 420 likes in two months. On April 19th, Twitter^[12] user @Xenodizzy reposted the meme, gaining over 240 likes and 38 retweets. On April 24th, Redditor^[13] LlamaKnight11 posted an image of Gregory the Caracal, titled "The big floppa" to /r/aww, gaining over 150 upvotes.

Starting in May 2020, the meme gained more widespread popularity on websites such as YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, and iFunny. On June 4th, subreddit^[14] r/bigfloppa was created, collecting thematic memes and fanarts.

Through 2020 and in 2021, Big Floppa maintained significant popularity in memes, with a competition against other 2020 cat meme, Bingus, arising. Big Floppa memes gained particular popularity among Russian-speaking users, the name translated as "Большой Шлёпа."^[15] A format in which various beverages are edited in next to Floppa, with Floppa pronouncing the name of the beverage with an extra "-er" suffix, gained popularity among Russian users (examples shown below).^[16]^[17]

Low Poly Floppa

On November 8th, 2020, Instagram^[24] user prozhony posted a photograph of Big Floppa sitting in a bathtub (shown below, left).

On February 12th, 2021, Twitter^[18]^[19] user @KittsterM posted a meme that used a low poly model of Big Floppa created in Blender. The post (shown below, center) received over 1,200 retweets and 3,200 likes in two weeks.

On February 19th, 2021, Twitter^[20] user @alob_e posted a cropped out image of low poly Big Floppa, with the post gaining over 8,400 retweets and 52,700 likes in four days (shown below, right). A February 20th Reddit^[21] repost of the image in /r/blursedimages received over 17,000 upvotes in three days.

Starting on February 21st, the image gained moderate popularity as source material for memes, with notable versions being posted on Reddit^[22] and Twitter^[23] (examples shown below).