Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

Seems like basement horse is popping up everywhere these days. And when I say popping up, I really mean it.

Just found a whole blog:
http://basementhorse.blogspot.com/

I saw the picture below on macrochan and hoped it was a meme.

Now there is some hope!

Can we find the original picture? The top one is not original, seeing as the grass around the horse looks photoshooped, and Ive shooped alot of whoops in my time to know it.

However, this is the first picture I recall seeing of Basement horse. As far as I know all useage of basement horse came after this photo popped up.

Here's what I know about this photo.

I first ran across this photo on Digg last January, and it popped up again on Buzzfeed in about a month or two later.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/shebs/basement-horse-131
The girl in the photo is a Myspace user named Amber Amputee, who has a bit of a cult-following on 4chan.
http://www.myspace.com/amberamputee

At the time it seemed like the first time anyone had seen Basement Horse but I'll look deeper to see if I can confirm where Basement Horse first came from.

This Basement Horse blog starts with the Amber Amputee image
http://basementhorse.blogspot.com/

Google Insights search data also starts at January 2009
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=%22basement%20horse%22&cmpt=q

On the Rocketboom Blog, this pic captioned "Basement Horse Was There" was posted in January of 2009.
[EDIT, That was July 26th, or yesterday. My mistake]
http://blog.rocketboom.com/post/149269483/basement-horse-was-there

I'd say that so far it's a safe bet that all the action surrounding the "basement horse meme" was stirred up when the Amber Amputee photo made it to Digg and Buzzfeed.

I'll continue to look for any earlier Basement Horse references.

This has gotten more interesting. It seems that before it was "basement horse" the same meme was known as "sewer horse"
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=%22basement%20horse%22%2C%22sewer%20horse%22&cmpt=q

Neil Cicierega (re:Animutations) has taken basement horse concept a slightly different direction in one of his new videos (p.s. hold out to the end):

This definitely looks promising.

Nice searching, Chris. Some alternate names for Basement Horse: Floor Horse and WTF Horse.

If I remember correctly, 'WTF Horse' came about as a result of the 'Amber Amputee' image (January 2009) but that seems to just be by people who didn't get the Ceiling Cat reference.

Not sure about Floor Horse. Best link I can come up with is an image gallery from November 2008.

I feel like I've seen other (failed) Ceiling Cat variations out there but can't recall anything without spending hours in the 4chan archive.

I think as far as ceiling cat variations, there was wall dog

but you don't really see him much