Demotivational Posters

About

Demotivational Posters (a.k.a Demotivators)--where do we begin? As its name suggests, Demotivational Posters are typically designed to discourage one’s moral strength and diminish one’s self-esteem. It usually consists of a picture, centered and bordered in black, with all-cap title written in white, and in some cases, a tagline written in smaller font. Among the most prevalent cases of image macros in existence today, Demotivators can be likened to baseball cards of internet memes, only if everyone made them and nobody really bought them. Currently one of the leading hub-sites for these images is the single topic blog VeryDemotivational.^[1]

Origins

Despair Inc. is widely credited as the origin of Demotivational Posters and they began making spoofs of motivational posters (often found in corporate offices) since 1998. You can click here to check out the original collection of Demotivators made by Despair Inc. Over the years, they spread consistently across online discussion boards like 4chan as well as the blogosphere. Today, they’re notable for the insanely large volume in circulation and their off-track varieties/derivatives.

Evolution of Demotivational Posters

In its infancy, Demotivators mirrored popular themes often addressed within motivational posters, by juxtaposing:

1. banal optimism (ex: PERSISTENCE)
2. atmospheric picture (ex: man & woman jogging in a single row)
3. comical pessimism (ex: It’s Over Man. Let Her Go)

But as they became increasingly popular across the web, the joke was no longer bound within corporate/educational themes and became a signature meme involving “crude but funny” comments. Today, the white-on-black format of demotivators is a staple in Internet memescape and it’s fairly common to find demotivational posters sans cynicism.

The originals were typical Motivational Posters with sarcastic comments:

They are also frequently used in other memes:

How to Make Your Own Demotivational Poster

There are many sites with programs to make Demotivational Posters, including:

• Despair’s Parody Motivator Generator
• Motivator: Create your own motivational posters!
• Create a MotiFake
• There is even a program called Poster Forge that you can download to help.

Demotivational Posters in Use

A large number of sites feature Demotivational Posters. Some of them are:

• http://demotivateyou.com/
• http://despair.com/
• http://www.motifake.com/
• http://demotivationalz.com/
• http://www.roflposters.com/

Many blog sites contain specific types of Demotivational Posters, such as:

• Peter Griffin Motivational Posters
• Kurt Vonnegut Motivational Posters
• There is even a program called Poster Forge that24-2009/Kurt-Vonnegut-Motivational-Posters-107
• Demotivator youBlog

Media

• NYTimes largeMagazine (4/27/2008): Empowering numberby ofDisempowerment

• CNN (1/17/2004): "Despair sites feature Demotivational PostersInc. Somethe ofbrand themfor are:

External Links

^[1]Very Demotivational