About

Official seals are, on the Internet, image macros expressing the official status of something valuable or, in the contrary, completely useless in its utmost way, depending on the "reward" in status allowed by the seal.
They can be created and used for different situations: to mark an approval, a disapproval, an epic win or even an epic failure from a post, a topic, a picture, anything.

Origin

In real life, seals are used to signify an image of authenticity or credibility of an institution, whatever it can be.
Different types of coats of arms exist since the predynastic Egypt and the Heraldry as a profession according to Wikipedia.

In the late 2004, a website, SealCreator was created to promote and sell a program called "Seal Maker" while offering a free trial version of their product here.

Sealing trend

That program was meant to be useful for working purposes at first.
But then, a new trend of parodying existing stamps and seals, or creating new ones from Internet great icons began to spread.

One of the first characters to be part ot that trend was Pedobear with this "seal of approval" from the first half of 2005:

This seal began to be widely used in any situation where a loli picture or anything related to pedobear was judged enough worthy to be reward with that picture, giving a higher meaning than mere approval pictures to it.

Evolution

Official seals began to gather derivative pictures concerning approval/disapproval, but also many other subjects.

- On YTMND
The same year, YTMNDs being about seals started appearing, mainly reusing the "seal of approval" terms:

• http://reallytastyburger.ytmnd.com/

But then, it became a joke to play with the meanings of the "seal" word:

• http://sgsoa.ytmnd.com/

The most popular, with more than 8,000 views, is a pedobear one from 2006 talking about Stephanie from Lazy Town :

• http://stephanieisalmostlegal2.ytmnd.com/

- On other media

2 flash versions of the "4chan's Seal of Epic Failure" have been made circa 2007 (beware, it's a little flashy):

• http://dagobah.biz/flash/4chan_FAIL_Seal.swf
• http://dagobah.biz/flash/FAIL_seal.swf

There are also some Youtube videos featuring seals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtZU85unCRc (embedding deactivated)

In 2006, another Official seal maker, entirely free this time, has been created, helping the meme's spread even further.

Search Interest

External References