About
Animals Being Jerks is a subgenre of animal-related online media in which various creatures are portrayed as being socially ill-mannered.
Origin
The single topic Tumblr blog “Animals Being Dicks”[7] was launched on July 11th, 2011, with the first post highlighting an animated GIF of two dolphins colliding in mid-air (shown below). Within the first two years, the post gained over 470 notes.
Spread
On November 9th, 2011, the Internet humor blog Slacktory[11] published a video montage of misbehaving animals (shown below), receiving more than 700,000 views and 200 comments in the next two years.
On July 21st, 2012, Animal Planet[9] introduced a playlist of mischievous animal videos titled “Animals Being Jerks.” On December 1st, MSN[10] published a slideshow highlighting several animated GIFs of ill-mannered animals. On February 21st, 2013, the subreddit /r/AnimalsBeingJerks[8] was launched by Redditor tara1, which garnered upwards of 74,000 subscribers in the next four months. On March 30th, YouTuber Olynoyem uploaded a montage titled “Animals Being Jerks” (shown below).
Notable Examples
Derivatives
On February 21st, 2013, the same day that /r/AnimalsBeingJerks was launched, Redditor Kijafa simultaneously created the first spin-off subreddit /r/AnimalsBeingDicks[3], accumulating more than 10,400 subscribers in the same time frame. Over the course of the next few months, several similar subreddits were launched, including /r/AnimalsBeingBros,[2] /r/AnimalsBeingDerps,[4]/r/PlantsBeingJerks[5] and /r/AnimalsBeingAnimals.[6]
Search Interest
External References
[1]Reddit – /r/AnimalsBeingJerks
[2]Reddit – /r/AnimalsBeingBros
[3]Reddit – /r/BirdsBeingDicks
[4]Reddit – /r/AnimalsBeingDerps
[5]Reddit – /r/PlantsBeingJerks
[6]Reddit – /r/AnimalsBeingAnimals
[7]Tumblr – Animals Being Dicks
[8]Reddit – /r/AnimalsBeingJerks
[9]Animal Planet – Animals Being Jerks
[10]MSN– 16 pictures that prove animals can be jerks too
[11]Slacktory – Animals Being Jerks