About

Found This Pathetic Thing In The Woods, continued, It Smells. I’m Going to Try to Save It, is the caption on a viral tweet where a user finds a dirty, plush Gudetama doll in the woods then brings it home and restores it. The tweet, posted by @chefmaeda in late April 2023, went viral and inspired redraws and recreations over the following days replacing Gudetama with other characters.

Origin

On April 28th, 2023, Twitter^[1] user @chefmaeda posted a photograph of a Gudetama plush sitting in the middle of the woods, writing, "found this pathetic thing in the woods. it smells. i’m going to try to save it," garnering over 141,000 likes and 20,000 retweets in four days (shown below).

The poster proceeded to make several updates to the thread over the course of the day, showing themself washing and cleaning the plush and restuffing it (shown below).

Spread

As it went viral, the tweet inspired new variations and redraws over the following days. On April 29th, 2023, Twitter^[2] user @Blier_ posted an edit of the post replacing Gudetama with Anne Boonchuy from Amphibia, garnering over 4,800 likes in three days (shown below, left). On April 30th, the original post was reposted by Facebook^[3] page Catmin's Anticapitalist Treehouse of Solidarity, garnering over 620 reactions in two days. On May 1st, Twitter^[4] user @eIessarr posted a version of the meme referencing Stranger Things, garnering over 1,160 likes in a day (shown below, right).

Later that day, Twitter^[5] user @quantumsapphx posted a redraw of the meme that gained over 940 likes in two days (shown below. On May 2nd, Tumblr^[6] user xenondrawz posted a version of the meme referencing Trigun that gained over 130 notes in under 12 hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References