About

This Is Why The Dog Is Happier is a motivational or inspirational image macro showing a man and his dog sitting outside on a bench. The man has multiple thought bubbles that show him worrying about multiple events or concepts unrelated to the current moment, while the dog is only thinking about the moment. The image was posted to both Facebook and Instagram in 2016 and became an exploitable template in ironic memes where creators re-edited the images within each thought bubble.

Origin

The original image was posted to either Instagram or Facebook in early July 2016, however, the original creator is unknown. The first repost online was made by Facebook^[1] page Peace, Love & Practice on July 9th, 2016, where over the course of six years, it received over 35 likes (shown below). On July 10th, it was reposted to Instagram^[2] by the page news_real who earned roughly 1,000 likes in nine years. In the description of their post, they tagged a since-deleted page, standup911, who is purportedly the original creator.

Spread

The most viral, early repost of the image was uploaded on July 18th, 2016, to Facebook^[3] by the verified user David Wolfe, a public, motivational speaker. His post received roughly 43,800 reactions and 43,300 shares in six years.

By 2017, other versions of the image with slightly altered optics appeared on Instagram.^[4] It started to become a recognizable image macro by 2018 and started being remixed into ironic meme content. On March 18th, 2018, Redditor TheGamingGod72 exploited the image in a meme posted to /r/YouSeeComrade^[8] in which they replaced the dog's thought bubble with communist imagery. Over the course of four years, the image received roughly 3,000 upvotes (shown below, left). On March 20th, 2018, Instagram^[5] page hammsbeer replaced the dog's thought bubble with a dog licking a Hamm's beer can. Over the course of four years, the meme received roughly 1,400 likes (shown below, right).

On September 29th, 2020, the meme received another re-edit, posted by Instagram^[6] page 3stardg who replaced what the dog was thinking about to be the album cover for Bladee's Icedancer, earning roughly 3,100 likes in two years (shown below, left). On April 24th, 2021, Instagram^[7] page onlyballs_ posted a version that replaced the dog thought bubble with Damn Daniel, earning over 230 likes in one year (shown below, right).

The template spread to both 4chan ^[9] and VK.^[10] On VK, the template was used en masse throughout 2020.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References