About

Introspective Pug is an advice animal image macro series featuring a photograph of a pug dog looking out a window in the back seat of a car. The captions typically portray the dog as having a brooding, curious or philosophical internal monologue, often beginning with the phrase "I don't know man, I just…"

Origin

Redditor damuss submitted a post titled "Sometimes I feel like my friend's dog has gone pretty deep"^[7] on October 4th, 2012, which featured a photograph of a pug dog staring out a rain-covered window in the back seat of a car (shown below, left). Within five days, the post received over 13,187 up votes and 175 comments. The same day, Redditor PrinceWilliam13 submitted a post titled “Introspective Pug” to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[1]subreddit, which featured the same photograph with the caption “I don’t know man, I just- / What if he really did throw the tennis ball, you know?” (shown below, right). Within four days, the post received over 21,500 up votes and 200 comments.

Precursors

The photograph of the pug peering out the rain-covered window bears many stylistic similarities with the photographs used in the Over-Educated Problems image macro series, the "Cats Looking Out The Window in the Rain" Tumblr^[8] blog (shown below, middle) and an example from the Sad Frog series (shown below, right).

Spread

Also on October 5th, an image macro compilation of Introspective Pug was posted on the Internet humor blog Tastefully Offensive via Tumblr^[10], where it gained more than 5,600 likes and reblogs in the following days. On October 6th, Redditor PrinceWilliam13's image macro was featured on the Internet humor stie I Can Has Cheezburger^[6] and a compilation of notable examples was published on the viral content site BuzzFeed.^[3] The same day, 9gag user grayfront^[4] submitted an image macro with the caption “I don’t know man, I just… / I can’t get the smell of her asshole out of my head." Within three days, the post received over 9,300 Facebook shares and 24,400 up votes. Also on that day, the same image macro was submitted to FunnyJunk^[5]by user Gamedudebt. As of October 9th, 2012, the “Introspective Pug” Quickmeme^[9] page has received over 550 submissions.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References