This Is Fine

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Part of a series on KC Green. [View Related Entries]

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About

This Is Fine is a two-pane image of an anthropomorphic dog trying to assure himself that everything is fine, despite sitting in a room that is engulfed in flames. Taken from an issue of the webcomic series Gunshow illustrated by K.C. Green and published in early January 2013, the cartoon is typically used as a reaction image to convey a sense of self-denial or acceptance in the face of a hopeless situation.

Origin

The comic originally comes from K.C. Green's Gunshow comic #648, titled "The Pills Are Working" or "On Fire," that was posted on January 9th, 2013. ^[1] Green's drawings have been the basis of several other memes including Staredad, Mother of God and I'm Okay With This. The comic depicts a dog in a room that is burning to the ground. The dog reacts calmly, even as he slowly melts from the heat.

Spread

On April 26th, 2013, the comic's first two panels were submitted to a thread on 4chan's /vr/ (retro games) board (shown below, left).^[26] On January 10th, 2014, Redditor theonefoster submitted the first two panels to /r/funny^[27] with the title "Accurate representation of me dealing with university stress" (shown below, right).

On September 21st, user SPIDER_MAN posted these two panels on /r/Funny^[2]. The post received over 1,400 upvotes and 40 comments. The same post also received 4,300 upvotes and 106 comments on Imgur.^[3]

GOP Commentary on 2016 DNC

On July 25th, 2016, the Republican National Committee (RNC) tweeted the two-pane reaction image via its official Twitter account @GOP^[12] as a commentary on the chaotic atmosphere of the opening day at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, accompanied by a shrug emoticon and hashtags #DemsInPhilly and #EnoughClinton.

Within the hour of @GOP's tweet, K.C. Green^[13] responded to the Republican National Committee's unauthorized use of his artwork by expressing his personal disdain towards the Republican party via Twitter (shown below).

Then on the early morning of July 26th, political cartoon website The Nib^[14] responded to @GOP's tweet with a custom rendition of the original cartoon featuring the Republican elephant in place of the cartoon dog (shown below), illustrated by K.C. Green himself and commissioned by the website for exhibition at an art gallery in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia.

According to Matt Bors, the founder of The Nib, the commissioned artwork had already been completed by the time @GOP decided to tweet the reaction image.

“We were brainstorming some ideas for our Philly space and thought of adapting the ‘this is fine’ meme for the GOP. When we saw the GOP’s tweet going around in a pathetic attempt to be hip with memes, we saw the opportunity for a good own.”

Video Game

On November 13th, 2016, a few days after the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, indie game developer Nick Kaman^[20] released a web-based 8-bit game inspired by Green's original comic for free play on his website. In the game, the player assumes the role of the beloved dog character and must use a fire extinguisher to put out the flames engulfing the house with sprays of heart.

click through the image to play the game!

Although the gameplay itself is simple and two-dimensional, similar to that of a visual novel, the pixel art video game tribute to "This Is Fine" Dog received more than 10,000 plays within the month. According to Kaman's production note, he decided to work on the project in "an attempt to capture how I felt and how those around me felt after the results of the 2016 election.

Senator Richard Burr's Statement

On August 1st, 2018, the ABC News Twitter feed posted a video of North Carolina Senator Richard Burr referencing the "This Is Fine" meme while discussing Russian interference in United States politics (shown below).

“Some feel that we as a society are sitting in a burning room, calmly drinking a cup of coffee, telling ourselves ‘this is fine. That’s not fine. And that’s not the case. We should no longer be talking about if the Russians attempted to interfere with American society. They’ve been doing it since the days of the Soviet Union, and they’re still doing it today.”

That day, Twitter user @davidmackau^[22] replied with an edit of the comic featuring the phrase "This is a reference to an internet meme" (shown below). That day, several news sites published articles about the reference, including Time,^[23] The Hill^[24] and Inverse.^[25]