About

Demotivational Posters (a.k.a Demotivators) 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 an all-cap title written in white, and in some cases, a tagline written in smaller font.

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:

How to Make Your Own Demotivational Poster

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

• Despair's Build Your Own Calendar
• Motivator: Create your own motivational posters!
• Create a MotiFake (via Wayback Machine)
• 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/ (via Wayback Machine)
• http://despair.com/
• http://www.motifake.com/
• http://demotivationalz.com/
• http://www.roflposters.com/ (via Wayback Machine)

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
• Demotivator youBlog (via Wayback Machine)

Media

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

• CNN (1/17/2004): Despair sites feature Demotivational Posters Inc. (via Wayback Machine)

External References

^[1] Very Demotivational