The curious case of Confession Bear: the reappropriation of online macro-image memes

Abstract

‘Advice animals’ are popular user-created, image-based, and online meme formats. The memes include a humorous image of an animal juxtaposed with text offering advice and/or making a joke. One such example is known as ‘Confession Bear’, which features a sad looking Malayan sun bear ‘confessing’ to something silly, shameful, taboo, or embarrassing. Confession Bear was first circulated through the online community Reddit and was intended to be humorous. However, users unexpectedly started creating and sharing more serious confessions involving topics such as rape, abuse, and addiction. These more serious confessions juxtaposed with the Confession Bear image spurred lengthy in-depth conversations on the Reddit message boards about the validity, authenticity, and appropriateness of such confessions. Some users argued advice animals were not ‘supposed’ to be serious, claiming these confessions were an inappropriate use of the form; as such, some users attempted to regulate the participatory culture created by the production of image-based memes. Others sought to find the ‘truth’ in the claims; some argued the confessions were false and therefore inappropriate, while others defended the confessions as authentic, and therefore appropriate. This paper argues anonymity allows users to appropriate and repurpose humorous image-based memes in ways that simultaneously challenge and reproduce hegemonic culture.

Keywords:

• memes
• anonymity
• Reddit
• confession
• remix
• participatory culture

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Andrew J. Nelson (M.F.A., University of North Texas) for helping view and categorizing hundreds of Confession Bear memes. His insights and research about Reddit and Confession Bear were valuable contributions to this article.

Notes on contributor

Jacqueline Ryan Vickery (PhD University of Texas at Austin) is an assistant professor at the University of North Texas in Denton, TX. She conducts qualitative and ethnographic research on teens’ digital media practices as they intersect with issues of digital equity, informal learning, school policies, identity politics, digital literacy, and privacy. She is an associate researcher for the MacArthur Foundation's Connected Learning Research Network (CLRN) and has served as Coordinating Editor of the online journal FlowTV.org. [email: [email protected]]

Notes

1. Otaku is a Japanese work used to describe manga and anime fans, their interests are often considered obsessive.

2. According to KnowYourMeme, ‘an image macro is a broad term used to describe captioned images that typically consist of a picture and a witty message or catchphrase.’

3. PostSecret is an ongoing community art project and website in which individual's mail in homemade postcards with art or images to accompany an anonymous confession.

4. Users have the option to include a title with their submission, which is posted as a hyperlink and appears at the top of the submission.

5. Similar to Reddit, Chive.com is an online forum and community for users to submit and share funny videos and images.