I'm Mad! Here's a Solution

About

I'm Mad! Here's a Solution refers to the first two lines of dialogue in a webcomic published to Poorly Drawn Lines in July of 2016. In the 4-panel comic, two men, one angry and one neutral, are talking. The angry man says, "I'm mad!" and the neutral man responds by holding up a folder and saying, "Here's a solution." The angry man burns the folder and says, "I don't want a solution." In the final panel, he says, "I want to be mad." Shortly after publication, the comic saw use as an exploitable object labeling format, with users labeling various parts of the comic and photoshopping the dialogue/imagery to change the context.

Origin

On July 25th, 2016, Reza Farazmand published the comic, titled "Mad," to his website Poorly Drawn Lines^[1] (shown below). On the same day he posted the comic to the Poorly Drawn Lines Facebook^[2] page and Tumblr^[3] blog, garnering over 3,200 reactions and 630 shares in 4 years on the former and 57,200 notes on the latter in 4 years. On the same day, the comic was posted to the Poorly Drawn Lines Twitter^[4] page garnering over 1,300 retweets and 2,000 likes in the same span of time.

Spread

It's unknown who made the first meme using the webcomic. One of the earliest edits was uploaded to /r/meirl^[7] by Myriod on August 17th, 2016, in which the word "mad" in the first panel is replaced with "depressed" and the words "be mad" in the last panel are changed to "die," garnering over 260 upvotes in roughly 4 years (shown below).

On August 25th, an unknown Imgur^[5] user uploaded a variation of the comic making reference to gamers hating on Street Fighter V rather than playing a different fighting game. The post gained over 20,700 views in 4 years (shown below, left). On September 8th, Lightyblue9 uploaded another variation of the comic to Imgur^[6] making reference to people who complain about iPhones, garnering over 113,000 views and 3,900 upvotes in a comparable span of time (shown below, right).

The comic continued to see use over the next four years to criticize groups who complain about things without solutions. On July 5th, 2019, asdf_qwerty27 posted an extended variation of the comic to /r/sciencememes^[8] garnering over 490 upvotes in 16 months (shown below, left). On March 20th, 2020, spoonbones uploaded posted a variation of the comic to /r/Doom^[9] teasing those who complain about the game, garnering over 2,100 upvotes in 8 months (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References