Just Little Things

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About

Just Little Things^[1] is the name of a single topic blog that launched in December 2010 posting sharable image macros containing text describing small things or actions that make people in general happy. The fad has led to many spinoff blogs which either stick with the original plain text on a colored background format or use superimposed text on artistic-looking "hipster" photographs. Some of these blogs have also inspired parody blogs themselves.

Origin

Just Little Things launched on December 31st, 2010, posting 34 image macros utilizing plain black text on different colored backgrounds to describe a number of simple pleasures in life. The blog was the brainchild of Californian student Nancy Vu, who launched the blog during her sophomore year of high school. As of October 2012, Just Little Things had more than 500,000 followers and saw 25,000 page views per day.^[2] As of March 2013, there are more than 880 image macros on the site.

Spread

By April 2012, dozens of blogs dedicated to specific people, fandoms, objects or subcultures with the snowclone title "Little X Things" began popping up on Tumblr. As early as April 20th, 2011^[3] some of these blogs began transitioning away from the colored background format, superimposing their text on to photos illustrating the subject at hand.

Notable Examples

Just Girly Things

Just Girly Things^[4] was created by three female Tumblr users in November 2011, highlighting some of their personal favorite things, ranging from different types of makeup and clothing brands to celebrities and television shows using the inspirational photo quote text and image style popularized by blogs like Kushandwizdom^[5] earlier that year.

On June 7th, 2012, a parody blog titled Juzt Gurly Thingz^[6] launched taking similar imagery and adding buzzkilling text describing strange or disturbing behavior disguised as a "girly" thing. As of March 2013, both Just Girly Things and its parody blog are still active.

Things Boys Do We Love

Things Boys Do We Love launched in December 2011 with posts very similar to Just Girly Things, only focusing on meaningful or cute moments in relationships.

As early as January 16th, 2013, these images were parodied in a post on the Metal Memes subreddit^[7] comparing an image macro from the blog captioned "When boys have curly hair" with a photo of musicians Kirk Hammett Dave Mustaine (shown below, left). Between February and March, similar buzzkilling parodies were shared on MemeCenter^[8], the Lolbrary^[9], FunnyJunk^[10], WeKnowMemes^[11] and 9gag.^[12] On March 10th, the blog owner posted a response^[13] saying that she did not care if her posts were being parodied and was tired of receiving hate mail about her images.

Just Todd Things

As the AMC hit drama show Breaking Bad began approaching its end with several recurring characters either getting killed off or disappearing, Todd Alquist (played by Jesse Plemons), a former assistant and mentee of the protagonist character Walt White, became a central character in the episodes leading up to the finale, even earning a reputation among the fans as a gentle-mannered yet ruthless and sociopathic murderer. On September 22nd, 2013, shortly after the premiere of Breaking Bad's penultimate episode "Granite State," Redditor ButterSugarBun submitted a screen capture of Todd treating his captive Jesse to a bowl of ice cream edited in the style of Things Boys Do We Love image macros in a post titled "Todd is a perfect gentleman."^[14]

In the following week, the post garnered more than 3,569 upvotes and 510 comments, as well as numerous derivative instances by other Redditors. Also during that time, Reddit's Breaking Bad parody meme was picked up by The Daily Dot^[15], Mandatory^[16] and BuzzFeed.^[17] On September 25th, Redditor RubberDogTurds submitted three additional image macros in a follow-up thread titled "I can't help but imagine more #justtoddthings."^[18]