How Winnie the Pooh Became the Most Relatable Meme

Posted on by MTL +

Who doesn’t love Winnie the Pooh? (Trick question!)

Everyone loves Winnie the Pooh!

Pooh nodding his head while pointing to what I wrote. He agrees that everyone loves him! – Source

If you don’t know who Winnie the Pooh is, I’m not sure where you’ve been… Winnie the Pooh is a fictional teddy bear created by the author, A. A. Milne, who wrote a whole collection of children’s stories about the character. Pooh first appeared in 1924, and is still popular to this day.

I think the reason why Winnie the Pooh is still so popular is because the characters are so relatable. Pooh is so naive, slow-witted, and is known as “a bear of very little brain.” I’m sure we all feel slow and like we have a tiny brain some days. All these qualities that Pooh depicts are what make us love him and what brought about the genius idea of turning him into a meme.

A lot of memes exist of our favourite childhood friend. One that became very popular this year is the Tuxedo Winnie the Pooh meme. It is a photoshopped image of Pooh sitting in an armchair. It is commonly used alongside the actual image from the scene in Winnie the Pooh, where he says any phrase, and then the tuxedo version says a euphemism of the same phrase. This makes it sound quite funny as it not the way that you would typically say something.

Winnie the Pooh saying “You’re fired” and then Tuxedo Winnie the Pooh phrasing it as “You’re promoted to a customer.” This euphemism is funny because it is essentially what happens when you’re fired, but one would not normally think of it in such a way. – Source

Although the Tuxedo meme seems to be the most popular one, the meme that I actually find the most entertaining is the “Winnie the Pooh Reading” meme:

Pooh squinting, looking confused and uninterested in what he is reading. – Source

About:

The “Winnie the Pooh Reading” meme is exactly what the title sets it out to be: it is a picture of the well-known and loved children’s literature character reading a piece of paper. The picture is taken from a scene in the Winnie the Pooh animated television series. In the image, Winnie the Pooh looks quite puzzled about what he is reading.

Origin:

On December 1, 2012, a self-proclaimed memer, known as Sweetleafx, submitted the image to a social networking company, DeviantArt. He has been credited for bringing the image into the public’s attention.

Upon the memer’s post of this image, people immediately began to find the image hilarious and started to add different captions to it. Following this, various versions of this meme started to become popular as well, using the different facial expressions Pooh made in that scene.

Image result for winnie the pooh reading meme
Pooh looking shocked and upset about what he is reading. – Source
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Pooh is just “not having it” with what is written. We’ve all made this face at one point. – Source

Popularity:

Unlike the Tuxedo Winnie the Pooh meme, this meme’s popularity had it’s major peak quite a while back, since it was created in 2012. However, it is still nonetheless being used today and it has actually had another recent peak of interest in May 2019.

Winnie the Pooh memes, as well as other memes of cartoon characters from our childhood, like Kermit the Frog, seem to be very popular. I believe that the reason for this is that seeing these characters in meme form gives us a sense that we are merging our childhood with our teenage/adult lives. It merges our childhood best friends with the concepts of memes that we love so much today. It reminds us of good times and gives us a sense of nostalgia.

Meaning:

The meme appears in many contexts. One of the uses conveys that something you are reading is difficult to understand. For example, when you’re trying to read a doctor’s writing and you can’t understand it, you would make that confused face.

As just explained, the first meme is showing the face you would make when trying to read your doctor’s illegible writing. (Source) I also used the meme to create a perfect representation of how confused I felt when I read the instructions for Blog Post #4.

Another popular use of this meme is to show a careless attitude – or in other words, excuse my language, “not giving a f*ck.” I think this one is the most popular version, since incorporating cuss words with such an innocent character from our childhood creates such a comical juxtaposition.

Pooh questioning “what the f*ck” he is reading. He really does not care about what’s written. He thinks the person is an idiot. (Source1 & Source2)

Lastly, the meme is also frequently used with the caption “Showing My Mom a Funny Meme.” This is because the meme just perfectly captures what moms look like when you show them something on your phone. Many moms tend to squint and look confused about what they are reading, and they don’t quite get what a meme is.

 An image of Pooh representing what moms look like when they are reading a meme. – Source

This meaning became especially popular with the younger generation. They started showing their mom the meme and videotaping their reaction. Moms were actually caught on video making the same face that Pooh makes. This seems to be especially popular as it is essentially bringing a meme to life. Here is a twitter video that demonstrates it perfectly:

Clearly, our much loved Winnie the Pooh has made a reappearance in our teenage/young-adult lives. We loved him then and we love him even more now. Personally, I love using memes of my favourite childhood characters. I strongly suggest you look at all the other Pooh memes there are out there. Pooh is just one hilarious bear — and a little nostalgia never hurt nobody!

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