In 2013, artist K.C. Greene printed the "This Is Fine" comic as part of his long-running series Gunshow. A few years after it was posted, in 2016, The Verge did an article on the piece as it had gained a ton of popularity online - especially as a meme on Imgur and Reddit.
If you are not familiar with it, the comic depicts a dog in a room surrounded by fire and, with a smile on its face, says "This is fine." In the 7 years since the original comic was printed there have been thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands, of versions of the meme posted online. Put "this is fine" into your search bar and click on Images - it goes on and on. College tuition, politics, Zoom chats, the economy, addiction, existential crises - if someone has felt consumed by it, then they made a meme about it.
Typically only the first or first two panels are used when posting it as a meme; rarely are the last 4 panels used, which look like this:
I'm starting to feel like dog in the last panel.
In the 2003 movie, The Italian Job, they reference the acronym FINE, which stands for Freaked Out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional. It was likely modified from Aerosmith's 1989 album F.I.N.E. which swapped Freaked Out for F*cked Up.
In other words, when someone says they are fine, like the dog in the comic, they are not fine.
In order to push forward, we tell people we're "fine." That though everything is on fire around us, we're freaked out about politics, insecure about our shortcomings, neurotic about how society sees us, and riding an emotional roller coaster from Monday through Sunday - we are just. Fine.
I'll be the first to tell you I'm fine. Ask me how I am and I'll respond, "I'm fine, just livin'." Or some variation of that. It doesn't necessarily mean that things are awful, but they sure as hell aren't great. I'm probably overwhelmed, wishing I could pay off college loans and my car, wishing I could take a trip to a new country instead of being quarantined, wishing that I was better at this or that.
The artist of the comic said this about what the comic represented: "I think I was still struggling with myself — with getting my anti-depressants and stuff right. You know, every now and then you have these off days where shit is worse, but you’re trying to ignore it."
We're just trying to ignore it - the politics, the collectors, the misleading thoughts - and make it one week at a time, one day at a time, one hour at a time.
In 1971, a poster which depicted a cat hanging on a bamboo pole doing what looks like a chin-up became the 70's version of "This is fine". Photographer Victor Baldwin had taken it years before and published it in on the back cover of a book. Requests began coming in from those who'd purchased the book for the photograph which later turned into a poster hung in the window of his gallery, which then prompted even more purchases.
It sold thousands of copies; people said that it helped them through recovery from surgery, accidents, and other difficult events. Baldwin said the cat "gave solace and strength to people everywhere, in all sorts of trouble, including myself."
It was one of the first motivational posters and spawned a revolution in the poster industry. Nowadays, you can't go into a school or workplace - or even people's homes - without seeing a motivational poster on the wall somewhere. Their ubiquity is owed to the constant barrage of crap we have to deal with and the increasing difficulty we face in order to get through it.
This isn't a piece about how things are awful and need to change. I don't have any motivational words about how to make it through. You can find as many articles on those topics as you can find motivational posters in any middle or high school classroom.
As we begin 2021, I just want to let you know that it's okay if things are not fine. January 1, 2021 didn't magically reset some imaginary karma scale in which things would go from crap to amazing without any effort.
In my last post I wrote about the things I'm looking forward to this year, but that doesn't mean I'm just going to ignore the fire blazing around me. I'll search for ways to snuff it out, little by little, and I encourage you to do so as well.
In all of us there is an innate desire to survive, to make it through against all odds. It's built into us, wired into our genetic code, and it tells us to do whatever it takes to make it through.
When the fire rages around you and all hope seems lost, reach for that bamboo stick. Pull up with everything you have. It ain't easy, but people (and cats & dogs) have been hanging in there for a long time and you can, too.
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