Back in March, the internet laughed at—and sympathized with—a Shiba Inu who had eaten a scorpion, causing her face to swell ridiculously. BuzzFeed even called it a picture that “never stops being funny.”
Months later, the unfortunate doggo is finding her way into a new kind of meme, representing the idea of something familiar, but just a little … off.
The handsome regular Shiba Inu is Pepsi, the major-brand soda. The swollen and squinty one is Bepis, the anime Pepsi rip-off that sounds like “penis.”
The two dogs have been applied to other concepts, too:
This doggo meme hasn’t quite taken off yet, but it should. It’s based on a very strong photo, and it combines a lot of the qualities that have made past memes successful.
The dogs serve the same function as this popular type of Drake meme, used to express one’s preferences:
Drake has since been eclipsed by the Persuadable Bouncer, who lets good stuff in and keeps wack stuff out:
This new swollen Shiba Inu meme could be next in line to provide this important service to the meme community. It carries the added implication that the “bad” side of the grid is similar to the “good” side, but it’s slightly inferior or counterfeit.
It also recalls the vintage memes Woll Smoth and Spoderman, which are distorted images of pop culture figures combined with intentional misspellings:
4chan
9gag
More than anything, it looks like Gooby, a crappily drawn version of Disney’s Goofy from the annoying “Dolan Duck” meme of 2011-2012. Redditors have not failed to notice this:
And, of course, any Shiba Inu meme brings to mind Doge, the prototypical internet shibe. Doge isn’t the most important meme online anymore, but it’s quietly stayed relevant on Tumblr since 2014.
This combination of winning elements makes the swollen Shibe a good bet to become a dank meme in 2017.
Or, to put it in meme form:
Daily Dot
