Demotivational Posters (1998)

added Jul 07, 2009 at 07:58PM UTC

34 Comments
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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.

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:

Although a whole genre of Demotivational Posters has been created by showing an instance of fail:

i

They are also frequently used in other memes:

How to Make Your Own Demotivator

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

  • There is even a program called Poster Forge that you can download to help.

Demotivators in Use

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

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

Demotivators in Media

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34 Comments

Will Kimball
Jul 07, 2009 at 08:01PM UTC , Will Kimball wrote:

I’m not exactly sure how to write one of these so if anyone wants to help, that would be great.

Captain Blubber
Jul 07, 2009 at 08:16PM UTC , Captain Blubber wrote:

Here’s a site Will.

http://diy.despair.com

BrucePwnsyourface
Jul 07, 2009 at 08:41PM UTC , BrucePwnsyourface wrote:

i have tones of these posters myself i know some of then on there own have gained meme statues so it may be good to put them as a collective group

Brad Kim
Jul 07, 2009 at 08:42PM UTC , Brad Kim wrote:

oh man, you dropped a heavy one! i’ll totally help out and let’s make it gooooood. real good.

BrucePwnsyourface
Jul 07, 2009 at 08:44PM UTC , BrucePwnsyourface wrote:

http://demotivateyou.com/ full of these posters

Captain Blubber
Jul 07, 2009 at 08:46PM UTC , Captain Blubber wrote:

Wait a second….. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/motivationals we must merge these articles!

Jamie Dubs
Jul 07, 2009 at 08:56PM UTC , Jamie Dubs wrote:

Not to worry, I can merge the articles. The other one doesn’t have any real text, so knock yrselves out writing this and I’ll just pull in the images & comments & such from the other one

Will Kimball
Jul 07, 2009 at 09:25PM UTC , Will Kimball wrote:

Just tell me if theres anything you can think of I should add

Kirsten S
Jul 08, 2009 at 01:27AM UTC , Kirsten S wrote:

Oh yes, please merge them. This has a fairly good description and pictures and it would be a shame if it was deadpool’d.

Benjamin S S
Jul 08, 2009 at 02:41AM UTC , Benjamin S S wrote:

Added 106 Demotivationals, added one twice by accident, it wont let me delete it though.

Surprised someone didnt already have this up, good job :)

Brad Kim
Jul 08, 2009 at 03:12AM UTC , Brad Kim wrote:

@Will

i think it’d be good to mention the varying qualities of demotivatiors in existence..

also, blogging sites that use demotivators..

examples of FAIL demotivators (failed sarcasm/jokes)..

Will Kimball
Jul 08, 2009 at 05:51AM UTC , Will Kimball wrote:

My other question is what will it take to get this confirmed? Also, should this be NSFW or should I change that?

Captain Blubber
Jul 08, 2009 at 12:00PM UTC , Captain Blubber wrote:

@Will

Once this is merged it’ll be confirmed and it doesn’t need to be NSFW but I’ll change that.

Brad Kim
Jul 08, 2009 at 06:40PM UTC , Brad Kim wrote:

whoooa great work with the photos d00dz.

@Will

i added & cleaned up some sections, hope that’s alright w/ you. and i think it’d be nice to catalogue more examples of demotivator format used in other memes? many thanks,

Kirsten S
Jul 08, 2009 at 07:38PM UTC , Kirsten S wrote:

Huh…

That’s weird, I had added the Envy one yesterday, then realized it was already there so I deleted it. Now today it’s back up and I can’t delete it. I wonder why that is?

Captain Blubber
Jul 08, 2009 at 08:07PM UTC , Captain Blubber wrote:

For the record, that solitaire poster above isn’t a fail.

The player simply must move a red king out.
Place the queen on top
Put the jack of clubs on the 10 of clubs.
????
PROFIT!

Will Kimball
Jul 08, 2009 at 08:31PM UTC , Will Kimball wrote:

@Brad Kim
Thanks! I think the cleanup looks great!

@Kirsten S
I’ve also noticed the problem with deleting on this and the Extreme Advertising page. Someone needs to look into that.

@Captain Blubber
They might be playing where you can move cards off the stacks. Otherwise the fail belongs to the posters creator, eh Cap’n.

Will Kimball
Jul 10, 2009 at 05:41AM UTC , Will Kimball wrote:

Do you guys know when this will be confirmed? I know we were waiting for the 2 articles to be merged, but I’m pretty sure this has just about everything the other one does.

Deuxieme_en_pie
Jul 11, 2009 at 05:00PM UTC , Deuxieme_en_pie wrote:

Actually, I’m not sure this is the same as what’s in the “Motivationals.” They seemed to be more about funny pictures followed or assisted by funny text. These Demotovationals seem like they are supposed to be the opposite of common office motivational posters (eg. “You can do it if you set your mind to it” and stuff like that.) This would be where the intent of the poster is to make a person un-motivated, lightly damage their self esteem, or make them realize it’s very, very hard to achieve life’s dreams.

I say they should be two separate articles, but probably a note that they came off of these demotivational posters. I think I see the difference between the two, and it seems they’re both big enough to have meme status.

Will Kimball
Jul 11, 2009 at 07:19PM UTC , Will Kimball wrote:

The way I saw it was that they were two variations of the same meme, but thats an interesting thought.

UncleDes
Jul 12, 2009 at 12:36PM UTC , UncleDes wrote:

You really atepped over a line in tastlessness with the Anne Frank. It does not really fit in the demotivational meme, and the excuse “we didn’t create it” does not wash. Please show a sense of decency and remove it.

Des

Captain Blubber
Jul 12, 2009 at 12:39PM UTC , Captain Blubber wrote:

Yeah UncleDes, that really shouldn’t be the icon for this meme. I’ll change it.

Benjamin S S
Aug 02, 2009 at 12:38AM UTC , Benjamin S S wrote:

I just noticed that the picture changed to one of the ones i uploaded, awesome

inky
Aug 12, 2009 at 09:53PM UTC , inky wrote:

Worst. Meme. Ever.

Jostin Asuncion
Aug 13, 2009 at 10:43AM UTC , Jostin Asuncion wrote:

I lol’d so hard on the Dwayne Johnson /r/ demotivational poster! This is truly meme-worthy! Confirm this already.

tractorboy
Aug 15, 2009 at 11:34PM UTC , tractorboy wrote:

don’t delete the anne frank one, it’s hilarious!

Benjamin S S
Aug 17, 2009 at 03:05AM UTC , Benjamin S S wrote:

Nice adds blubber

Sock Wizard
Aug 21, 2009 at 02:00AM UTC , Sock Wizard wrote:

Ha these are great. I never saw this many at the same time..

phideaux3
Nov 11, 2009 at 09:40AM UTC , phideaux3 wrote:

so much toast.

barunk
Dec 30, 2009 at 01:49PM UTC , barunk wrote:

Hmm I don’t know. Just because you’ve got a few images doesn’t automatically make it a meme. I advice you to upload a few more, maybe add some sub-memes if they excist, and could use some information about the meme’s origin.

Furat Actor
Jan 22, 2010 at 09:13PM UTC , Furat Actor wrote:

I think this might have started on RPG.net’s motivational poster threads. (If not, a lot of them were made there.) The three posters I uploaded make up what I think may be the funniest sequence I’ve seen, apart from the telepathic death mimes and the Epic Tunnel.

Shadowslayer
Jan 22, 2010 at 10:14PM UTC , Shadowslayer wrote:

dispair.com you can get t-shirts with those on it.

Spottedfur
Jan 24, 2010 at 04:08AM UTC , Spottedfur wrote:

Heheh…I’m gonna have fun uploading mine.

ProbablyHuman
Feb 02, 2010 at 08:23PM UTC , ProbablyHuman wrote:

Another site to use:
http://verydemotivational.com/

Some kinda NSFW ones there, but they’re still pretty good. Run by the Cheezburger network!

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