Critter-posting

Submission 2,648

Part of a series on Image Macros. [View Related Entries]

About

Critter-posting or Critterposting is a wholesome meme trend that often uses children’s story illustrations of small animals in image macros. Such memes include artwork from Frog and Toad (written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel), illustrations from books written by Beatrix Potter, the Finnish cartoon Moomin and other such children’s books that typically feature stories about woodland critters. Critter-posting memes often feature Whisper font text and cottagecore visuals and are similar to memes about silly posting.

Background

Memes featuring children's story illustrations can be traced back as early as 2013 when a series of memes featuring Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad were popularized on the micro-blogging site Tumblr. A now-deleted post by Tumblr^[1] account ambisgrus shows a Frog and Toad image receiving over 800,000 notes in 2013 prior to deletion (seen below, left). In 2015, a similar Tumblr^[2] post by user hotelmario gathered over 30,000 notes (seen below, right).

In the late 2010s, the aesthetic genre "cottagecore" began to grow on image mood-board sites like Pinterest and Tumblr. Cottagecore images often feature rustic and farm-like scenes, as well as various harmless animals commonly encountered in the countryside. Tumblr^[3] user gardengnomeprince posted the earliest known cottagecore mood board on April 25th, 2018 (seen below).

In 2019, image macro memes featuring Moomintrolls from Moomin cartoons began to circulate on Twitter and Tumblr. The Moomin are fictional children's cartoon characters that live in "Moominvalley," a setting that resembles the countryside and farmland aesthetics of cottagecore.

On January 23rd, 2015, user LichOdinson posted the earliest known Moomin meme to the Russian social media site Pikabu (seen below, left).^[4] On June 23rd, Twitter^[5] user @eccentricmarion posted the images side-by-side with the caption "typing an entire rant and deciding not to press tweet." The post received more than 500,000 likes and 167,000 retweets in less than one week (shown below, right).

Spread

On December 4th, 2020, the Instagram^[6] page @mouseinteriors posted the first image to their account, which focuses on sharing illustrations of anthropomorphized mice as often seen in children's story books. The account gathered over 80,000 followers in three years (seen below, left). The Instagram page @cutevintagedreams^[7] has also been posting a similar style of illustration content since April 17th, 2022, gathering over 176,000 followers in a year (seen below, right).

On September 6th, 2022, the Instagram^[8] page @thisbitchknowshorses420 posted a meme featuring mice drawn by children's story writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter, gathering over 6,000 likes in eight months (seen below).

Being Silly

Being Silly or Too Silly refers to a set of memes that riff on the adjective "silly," often using the innocent connotations of the word for satirical exploitation by portraying "being silly" as a problem. Memes referencing the word "silly" have existed throughout meme history, leading to both "Being Silly" and "Too Silly" becoming recognizable catchphrases in their own right, prominent on Twitter and Instagram, often in the form of a Whisper text-post. Some notable "silly" memes are 'Tis A Silly Place, I'm Just a Silly Little Guy and Every Day I Put On My Silly Little Outfits And Do My Silly Little Tasks. Many "silly" memes also use derpy animals like silly cats with two prominent examples being the BLEHHHHH :P Cat and the Baby Seal With Tongue Out.