Marsey the Cat

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About

Marsey the Cat is an orange cartoon cat designed as a sticker pack for Telegram by Ukrainian artist Anton Dmitriev in 2016. Marsey was adopted as the mascot of rDrama.net, a sister site of the subreddit /r/drama, in 2021, where he is frequently used as an emote. During 2022's /r/Place event, Redditors caught an admin erasing a drawing of Marsey from the canvas and purportedly banning users who questioned why, sparking accusations of cheating.

Origin

On February 11th, 2016, the founder of VK and Telegram, Pavel Durov, posted to VK^[1] announcing a sticker contest for Telegram asking users to design their own sticker pack for use by the devs. The contest was held on FL.ru. On February 16th of that year, artist Anton Dmitriev submitted his entry to FL,^[2] consisting of 15 different drawings of an orange and white cat (examples shown below). The sticker pack is available for Telegram at Telegramchannels.me.^[6]

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rDrama

Marsey was first mentioned by name on /r/Drama^[7] on June 29th, 2018, by Redditor Ed_ButteredToast, who is largely responsible for popularizing its use. Before this, the user posted the meme to /r/internetdrama.^[8] Redactor0 explained this in a post to rDrama.net^[9] on April 3rd, 2022. Marsey has been adopted by the rDrama.net website as its mascot, where it is also used as an emote. Users of the site often consider Marsey a male-to-female trans woman.

On September 29th, 2019, rDrama.net user Redactor0 created what is believed to be the first custom Marsey emote, showing Marsey in a traditional Korean Gat hat, worn during the Joseon period (shown below). The image was posted to Imgur^[11] on that day. Its origins were explained by the user in a post to rDrama.net^[12] in January 2022. A variety of custom Marsey emotes are collected on rDrama.net/marseys.^[10] As of April 7th there are over 1,000 variants on the site. On July 2nd, 2021 rDrama^[5] user SpringKisses announced the addition of new Marsey emotes based on the Pet the X emotes.

The popularity of Marsey inspired a Marsey-themed font^[13] and a Balloon-letter-guy-glitch.me variation website, marsey-letters.glitch.me.^[14]

/r/Place Drama

On April 3rd, 2022, Redditor Quiet_Chip_7802 posted to the r/Place^[3] subreddit during 2022's /r/Place event, writing, "A reddit mod is cheating, and the mods are removing out posts pointing it out." Attached is a video showing Reddit admin Chtorrr using administrative powers (foregoing the time buffer) to erase a drawing of Marsey from the canvas (shown below). The post gained over 107,000 upvotes in four days. Commenters accused the admin of banning accounts and deleting comments accusing them of cheating. An official reason for its deletion has not been revealed.

Reddit admin redtaboo pinned a comment to the post, writing, "What you're seeing here is some of the simple moderation tools we have available to admins for this event. A small number of us have been utilizing this in order to keep the canvas safe for everyone. While we understand some of you are concerned by this, we hope you continue to enjoy the space for what it is – a chance for many of you to come together and create a beautiful scene." A post made to rDrama.net^[4] that day claims anyone who added pixels to the piece was permanently banned, offering several links purportedly proving this. The post also claims that Marsey's artist is stuck in Kharkiv due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Marsey ended up making it to the final /r/Place 2022 canvas at position 389×1378 (shown below).