![]() ![]() Now, it seems, that identification has veered toward the ethereal and the surreal: We are now fairies or biblically accurate angels or actual voids. Identifying with animals is a legacy of early mainstream memes “Advice Animals,” or the widespread templates that showed a picture of a certain animal and text on the top and bottom, typically in Impact font, were an entire generation’s first exposure to internet humor. It was ironic that being stuck inside during lockdown made many of us yearn for a life with no laptops and no cell service but that all that yearning took place while looking at a screen, and it is ironic that in order to feel more like human beings we imagine ourselves as tiny furry critters. There was irony in cottagecore just as there is irony in critterposting. There’s a notion that life was better back then, even though it wasn’t.” Critterposting adds an even more fantastical layer onto images of ivy-covered trellises and mushroom forest paths: Not only can you imagine yourself living in a quiet, dreamy cottage, but you can be a literal bunny living in a quiet, dreamy had a chance of being a true femme fatale #dolletteaesthetic #mouseillustration #beatrixpotter #pinkaesthetic #girlyaesthetic #classicillustration #vintageillustration ♬ Picnic - Blue Poem Of Romanticism, the arts movement that emerged in response to the Industrial Revolution and that is the primary reference for cottagecore, Paul Quinn, director of the Chichester Center for Fairy Tales, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction told me in 2020 that “it’s a recall of the medieval era, this idealization of nature and Arthurianism - it’s a nostalgia for someone else’s past. Though it had been percolating on Tumblr for years, interest in cottagecore spiked in tandem with the worsening Covid pandemic for fairly obvious reasons: The scarier and more confusing things got outside, the more people sought a retreat into a simpler past, albeit one that never actually existed. “I see it as a variation of shitposting, where you didn’t put too much effort into it and it’s like a brain soup dump.”Īs critterposting falls firmly under the umbrella of “wholesome” memes, it’s impossible to separate from cottagecore, the aesthetic that romanticizes quaint rural living and fairy tale settings. You can be like, ‘Yeah, this is me putting on my silly little outfits to do my silly little tasks,” explains Sakshi Rakshale, an editor at Know Your Meme who covers, among other things, “girl meme culture.” She compares critterposting to something like the “Little Miss” or American Girl doll memes, where the image is meant to represent the poster’s mental state. It’s innocent in a childlike, girlish way. The meme encyclopedia Know Your Meme has even christened the genre with a fittingly adorable name: critterposting.Ī post shared by critter is harmless. These types of posts are funny, usually, because they juxtapose old children’s books like Brambly Hedge or The Wind in the Willows with modern references to “the haters” or “the grind” (a personal favorite uses the TikTok audio “I have plans that I cannot share with you right now because the haters will sabotage me” and the corresponding pictures are all of little mice napping in front of a fireplace). But never has it been more mainstream, or really, more understandable, to eschew typical posting norms and express the desire to leave the real world behind and escape into one where bunnies have tea parties. People have been posting pictures of anthropomorphic animals on Tumblr and Twitter and Instagram and writing “me” underneath for what amounts to eons of time in internet culture (like, a decade?). ![]() Each week we’ll send you the very best from the Vox Culture team, plus a special internet culture edition by Rebecca Jennings on Wednesdays.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |