About
Patient Bear is a series of a two photographs showing a black bear sitting at a wooden table, seemingly patiently waiting for something. The unusual aspect of seeing a wild animal acting like a human being caught on among netizens, spawning parodies and even image macros describing everyday waiting annoyances, in a manner not dissimilar to Waiting For Op.
Origin
On May 11th, 2008, Kakabeka Falls resident Dorothys Hays, from Ontario, Canada, shot several pictures as well as a video of a black bear trespassing on her property. The video, uploaded to Youtube on December 2nd 2009 (shown below), shows the bear seated at a wooden table in Hayes’ backyard before approaching the house, playing again with the table and eventually running away.
Among the photos, two would stand out: one showing the bear looking at the viewer (shown below, right) and another one with the bear looking away (shown below, left).
One of the earliest parodies was made on Motifake[1] on August 15th 2008, using demotivational style to a picture that reads “Picnics. This bear likes them.” (shown below).
Spread
Through out the rest of 2008, the initial photographs were heavily shared by emails to animal-loving websites[2], image aggregators such as My Confined Space[3] and Thread Bombing[4] as well as blogs nicknaming the animal “Bearack Obama”[5][6] waiting for aid from the government, in reference to president Barack Obama and his Obamacare plan. It even found itself on 4chan as early as November 2008, in a thread[7] referencing World of Warcraft.
Around mid to late 2008 as well[9], a new lasting nickname emerged in the form of demotivational images calling the animal “Patient Bear” (shown below). One of its earliest appearance on the web may have been on the now defunct JJ.AM website.
On January 1st 2012, an Advice Animal entry for Patient Bear[8] was registered to Meme Generator. As of February 2015, the macro, used to express situations in which one is waiting for something, ranked #4,062 on the site and led to the creation of over 1 400 parodies.
Macros
Notable Parodies
Search
External References
[1]Motifake – Picnics Bear
[2]Treehugger.com – Dude Where’s My Dinner?
[3]My Confined Space – Camping Bear waiting for his food
[4]Thread Bombing – Classic Pic – Picnic Table bear
[5]Spark it Up blog – Bearack Obama
[6]Preacher Pen blog – Cartoons and Politics
[7]4chan’s /tg/ archive – DAMNDRUIDSTOOD IT UP[4chan archive: may contain NSFW content]
[8]Meme Generator – Patient Bear
[9]Humor Hound – Patient Bear demotivational upload