More Advice, More Animals

formal rules, embedded spaces

I am too young to have really “been there” for Advice Animals. Sifting the flour of deep memory, a recollection of some older kid showing me a Bad Luck Brian meme in the early 2010s pops out — and also some Confession Bear action in Middle School computer lab. But that’s it. I really only became aware of Advice Animals after they were already “old” and already “classic.”

So I think that’s why I’m so fascinated by them: they come from a very different internet, and are one of our best sources for how the memes I love today developed and came of age. It’s the same thrill I get from reading old books: you learn what people were rebelling against and revising. It’s like going behind the scenes of the modern world and watching how it all developed.

So what was happening online in 2010 while I was listening to Coldplay on a Bono-approved Product Red iPod shuffle?

Difference and Repetiti…