62 new york | july 8–21, 2019
How to
Reclaim
Your Viral
Meme:
Beating
the Internet
in Seven
Steps
By abraham riesmanThe CULTURE PAGES
it’s taken for
granted that a meme,
once weaponized by the
internet, will never
return to the control
(and profit) of its
creator. See what
happened to Pepe the
Frog, who was never
born to be a right-wing
avatar. But when
cartoonist KC Green saw
one of his characters
meme-ified for political
purposes he didn’t agree
with, he took action.
Question Hound, better
known as the “This Is
Fine” dog, became
famous for a simple,
potent image that’s been
used far and wide: He
sits in a burning room
with a dumb smile on
his face, musing to
himself, “This is fine.”STEP 2
BUT ALSO YOU
CAN’T PREDICT WHAT
WILL GO VIRAL
Based on a cartoon dog that
Green used to doodle as a
kid, Question Hound first
appeared in Green’s series
Gunshow. The artist often
used the hapless canine as
a stand-in for himself. That
made perfect sense for
“On Fire,” which was
published on January 9,- It’s a simple, potent
image that captures our
chaotic times and our
refusal to accept awful
reality. Green doesn’t really
check web analytics, so
he didn’t initially know if
the comic was popular.
STEP 1
BE AWARE THIS CAN
HAPPEN TO YOU
In 2006, Green published a
comic in which a character
draws an anthropomorphic
phallus and names it Dick
Butt. It went viral, featured
on BuzzFeed and College
Humor and elsewhere,
and Green lost control
of it. “I didn’t even try
and hold on to that
copyright on that,” he
says, “so idiots can use it
as much as they want.”STEP 3
AND WHEN IT BECOMES
A MEME ...
On April 26, 2013, the first
two panels appeared on
4chan’s subboard for retro
video games. The meme
spread to Reddit forums and
the social-image site Imgur.