One historic day, some genius animal photographer took a snapshot of a wee kitten struggling to hang on to some high-up tree branch. That person (or some other wizard of copy-writing) cleverly captioned the picture with the humane and uplifting phrase: “Hang In There, Baby!”. Ever since, offices the world over have been more amiable and productive–reinvigorated with a ‘can-do’ spirit and the cheerful attitude that we, the people, can get through even the most difficult of obstacles! Humanity, at last, had the pictorial inspiration that it needed. OK, well, maybe not so much. But, everybody does recognize that cat pic, don’t they? It’s an iconic and earnest bit of self-help design. It was probably funny/cute when it first came out. Unfortunately, it’s now only ever viewed as either the subject of parody or as a symbol of loser/lonely cat-lady decor.
That flint, that cat poster, was followed by loads more corporate style ‘motivational’ posters. Lovingly photographed air balloons floating against a crystalline blue sky are displayed or a fiery Bengal tiger on the hunt, dashing through turbulent shallow water, or a majestic shot of ancient Stonehenge at sunset all with some bit of wisdom to make explode your head whilst you sit in waiting at the dentist’s office. You know, something like this:
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Well, the Internet at large has finally cottoned on that these are a bit, flippant and should quite rightly be satirized. These parodies are today’s great thing:
82. Fake Motivational Posters (also known as de-motivational posters)
One company, despair, inc. , was actually smart enough to make an enterprise out of it. They, as you can see by the two examples I’ve posted below, stay very close to their inspiration. At first glance, all of their posters could actually pass for legitimate motivational posters. It’s only when you read the text that you get the joke.
Here’s despair’s website if you’d like to see more (or buy a mousepad!) despair, inc.
Beyond the professional satire of despair, inc. , lie thousands of homemade posters. The pics won’t often be of the professionally snapped scenic beauty genre. These homemade ones are typically little more than an excuse to put a funny caption on some embarrassing photo that is available on-line. You can find these all over the place. You may have even be forwarded some by a colleague. They are truly a hot meme. Some of these are rib-splittingly funny. Others are just offensive or stupid. I tried to find a website that discriminated between the clever and the ignorant but that proved impossible. Scrolling through the handiwork was like reading the comments after a youtube video. The best and worst that humanity has to offer comes out. For each one that was hilarious, like this:
There would be a counterpart that was sickeningly offensive, racist, sexist, or homophobic. You know– crap like rape jokes. Sigh… There will always be idiots on the net that think they are funnier than they actually are. At any rate, I’ve trawled through quite a few of the on-line collections, including motifake.com and funnymotivationalposters.net and am now bringing you a few that I found especially entertaining. Enjoy!
I bet you’re eager to find more of these gems aren’t you? I am too. It’s kind of my new obsession at work. Well, unless you want to rely on other people compiling lists of the best ones, there IS a pretty good collection at this facebook profile which I believe was set up by the despair, inc. website anyway. Lots of homemade goodies available within one of their albums… with far fewer racist/sexist/ugly/stupid ones designed by idiots who make frequent spelling errors: Facebook Profile
Also, how badly do you want to walk Cooldog? Who’s a good boy?!!!???!!!!
