Plato's Man / Featherless Biped

About

Plato's Man refers to a tongue-in-cheek definition of man as a "featherless biped" given by the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Upon learning of that, philosopher Diogenes then plucked a chicken and brought it into Plato's Academy, saying, "Behold! I've brought you a man." In the late 2010s, Plato's definition of man became a subject of memes, first within the larger Diogenes Posting trend and then independently, with users sharing photographs of various two-legged, featherless objects and creatures, stating that they should be considered a man.

Origin

According to Diogenes Laertius,^[1] a biographer of the Greek philosophers, when Plato gave the tongue-in-cheek definition of man as "featherless biped," his opponent Diogenes brought a plucked chicken into his academy, saying, "Behold! I've brought you a man." The incident led the Academy to add "with broad flat nails" to the definition.

The historic incident first gained recognition in memes within the Diogenes Posting trend, which originated in 2015 and involved presenting the philosopher as the original shitposter and a troll (example posts from Tumblr^[2][3] shown below).

While viral posts about the encounter were made prior, it didn't become a meme format until October 9th, 2018, when Tumblr^[4] user everythingstarstuff posted a photograph of a pangolin standing on its hind legs captioned "Feathers ☐, biped ✔️, this is a man" (authorship unconfirmed). The post (shown below) gained over 115,800 likes and reblogs in four years.

Spread

Starting in 2019, this version of the format in which various characters and objects were checked for being featherless and bipedal before being declared a man gained prominence online. For example, on September 19th, 2019, Redditor^[5] Caesar321 posted a meme that declared a raccoon standing on its hind legs to fall under Plato's definition of man, with the post gaining over 3,300 upvotes in /r/HistoryMemes in six months. On December 25th, Instagram^[6] account big__floppa posted a meme checking Big Floppa for falling under Plato's definition (shown below, center). On January 9th, 2021, Redditor^[7] DANKBOI-420-69 creates a meme based on a viral 2020 exchange between Tumblr users sandmandaddy and hrraandm, with the post gaining over 18.300 upvotes in six months (shown below, right).

This format, along with other memes based on Plato's definition of man and Diogenes heckling him, saw moderate presence through 2020 and 2021, with multiple versions of the meme going viral.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References