In the information age, memes are a particularly visible form of cultural currency. New technologies, particularly the internet, allow certain memes to spread and mutate with unprecedented speed. As yet, however, the rhetorical and logical appeals which give one meme velocity while another founders, are ill-understood. Why do hundreds of thousands of internet users read “advice animals” on the social news aggregate site reddit while other potential memes go unnoticed and unknown? It is fortunate that websites archive much of their content: observers can trace the history of recent memes and better understand what properties cause a meme to succeed. Spider Bro, one particular type of advice animal, is characteristic of memes as self-consciously used on the internet. Spider Bro has a history, a purpose, and uses rhetorical strategies to make a point.
Before beginning this analysis, it is important to note that many of the sources used in researching such a topic will appear unreliable. It’s difficult to pin-point the origin of any idea, especially an informal and quickly-transformed idea like an internet meme. Website archives and wikis must be used as they often represent the only, and thus obviously the most reliable, sources of information about a meme; they are only used when no other source of information is available.
Spider Bro originated on 4chan, the infamous message board site, in mid-2010. An anonymous user posted an obviously fabricated story about a spider’s helpfulness and and hyperbolic heroism. A screen capture of this story quickly made its way to other web sites, and the amusing story, especially the character of Spider Bro, caught the eye of reddit users.
Some reddit users used Spider Bro, as originally presented in the 4chan story, in rage comics, complete with hyperbolic acts of heroism. More interesting to one studying memes is the more structured use of Spider Bro as an advice animal, which arose as a direct response to the Kill It With Fire meme. The Kill It With Fire meme manifested on reddit as a phrase which often ended rage comics: a comic would describe a disgusting or horrifying object or animal, and the author of the comic as represented within the comic would kill it with fire. At some point, people started using the Kill It With Fire meme with spiders, making the act of killing with fire humorously excessive.
Although the Kill It With Fire meme was used in a joking manner, it communicated a very serious aversion to spiders. Some reddit users must have noted that spiders are good for human and environmental health and desired to point out the benefits of spiders in a similarly humorous form. It was then that the Spider Bro meme from 4chan was re-purposed as an Advice Animal, using Spider Bro’s personification but without the impossible actions of his original incarnation.
Advice Animals, also originating on 4chan, are a specific kind of an Image Macro. Image Macros are images with text superimposed over them for humorous effect; Advice Animals are Image Macros where the image is an animal, or, more recently, a human, with an associated personality, and the text is either dialogue or description which suggests a situation and the Advice Animal’s response to that situation. By using such a rigidly structured type of meme, the authors of Spider Bro images limit Spider Bro’s versatility but increase his effectiveness and ability to evolve. The personalities of Advice Animals are constructed and constituted within the online communities they inhabit, and by formulating Spider Bro as an Advice Animal, authors of Spider Bro images are able to incorporate a complicated personality into a single image and small amount of text. Because Spider Bro images are so formulaic, they are also very easy to understand and make, encouraging even people who have only just encountered them to make their own.
Spider Bro’s personality can be best described as friendly and vulnerable. The picture over which text is juxtaposed is of a furry and relatively harmless-looking spider with large eyes. The text is usually understood to be Spider Bro’s dialogue; this creates a sense of direct, intelligent interaction. Spider Bro’s dialogue often begins with “Hey man”, “Hi”, or “Hello human housemate!”, making him seem friendly; even the “Bro” in his name implies close, congenial association. Advice Animals consist not only of an image of an animal and text, but of a situation. In a Spider Bro Advice Animal, Spider Bro addresses the human in whose home he lives, wanting to be friendly and helpful, and then, often after being cut off in the middle of a sentence, expresses alarm at the human’s threatening actions. For example, the text above the spider might say, “Hey man, there was a wasp in here but I got him, I know how you hate wasps, and you know I’m always looking out for you--” while the text below the spider would say, “...what’s the book for”.
The rhetoric instinctually used in the Spider Bro meme is remarkable. Authors of Spider Bro images use the previously-established format and personality, but they must use the text they add to convey a sense of vulnerability and describe a situation which makes the reader sympathize with Spider Bro. It’s only because of the form of the meme that Spider Bro images are able to, when well-written, convey such a sense of friendliness and vulnerability, despite the fact that human readers are otherwise more likely to sympathize with the implied human.
As previously mentioned, Spider Bro the Advice Animal was likely originally conceived as a way to express that, although spiders are disgusting and frighten some people, they can be beneficial. Most people have been told before that spiders eat other pests and thus shouldn’t be killed, but this appeal to logic is useless in the face of emotion. Spider Bro uses pathos to combat pathos, presenting a spider who is sympathetic and only wants to help humans. Key to his effectiveness is that, although he rationalizes his actions with the intelligence of the personified, he acts just like any spider and thus his well-meaning rationalizations could apply to a real spider. This strong emotional appeal is much more likely to change the behavior of its audience than any logical appeal.
Spider Bro’s capacity for changing behavior is limited, however, by the size of his audience. As previously stated, the personalities of Advice Animals are constructed and constituted within the online communities they inhabit. Although it is relatively easy to understand the form and purpose of the Spider Bro meme after seeing a few examples, this is still a requirement for understanding which many people don’t meet.
Spider Bro declined in popularity shortly after his rise. Because the format is so specific, the number of unique Spider Bros which can be made is limited, and, because it was a response to the Kill It With Fire meme, Spider Bro declined in popularity with said meme. Spider Bro can, however, still be analyzed as an example of an Advice Animal with a specific place in time, purpose, and with specific rhetorical strategies for achieving that purpose.
James Gleick said in a May 2011 article that memes are like organisms in that they grow, reproduce and mutate. If this is true, Advice Animals are particularly useful examples of memes: their reproduction and mutation is self-consciously done and automatically and publicly documented online. As studying the spread of ideas online becomes more and more important, case studies of memes such as Spider Bro will become more and more useful, as they are specific examples of memes which exemplify the digital transfer of memetic information.
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