By now, you've seen this photo of a Kermit puppet with its knees folded in, inspiring what some people are calling the "saddest meme in the world."
when u give urself a gentle hug evrey night before u go to bed, reassuring urself that no mater wat, the day was yo… https://t.co/TcM7WCKV5T
The puppet has brought out some the most devastatingly honest, and depressingly existential, musings on the internet.
@jonnysun when you realize that your daughter is now too big to hold without it looking silly, and you will never p… https://t.co/Q3sudXU4Km
You can comb through some if you're really in your feelings right now.
In no more than three days, the forlorn Kermit puppet — and derivative memes — was everywhere. People have even found the puppet in other hilariously intricate positions. A lot of people are wondering who in the world is spending their precious time doing this.
WHO owns this Kermit doll and why do they keep making him look so sad
Twitter user @JonnySun, who catapulted the kermit puppet to meme-status, told BuzzFeed News he did not know where it originated, and assumed it was a "classic meme."
"I thought it had been around forever," he said.
Who in the world? That would be 17-year-old Pinja Savolainen from Finland. The teen told BuzzFeed News the Kermit doll is actually her mother's, and it was purchased "years ago" at a flea market in Finland.
Which led us back to (not to be hyperbolic but) the GOAT thread that took place in early September. Savolainen snapped the photo of her mom's old Kermit puppet, and allowed her followers to "request memes."
i cant believe we actually have a kermit;; request memes
What ensued is — and again, you can fight me on this — the greatest Twitter thread of all time. Or, at the very least, the greatest Twitter thread about Kermit the frog of all time.
At the time, she said she didn't get many requests from her followers so she just let her own imagination run wild.
"I just had these random ideas coming in my head one after another and that's pretty much how all the different scenarios were born," she said.
"What made the photographing more fun was all the small stuff you can see in the pictures, which are from my mom's old dollhouse," Savolainen said.
She even created small props from scratch for Kermit, as the thread began to build and build on itself over a course of a few days.
She said piecing the tiny scenarios together didn't take any time at all.
On Nov. 10, nearly a month before Sad Kermit memes began to circulate widely online, Savolainen started to worry about her friend, Eve, whomshe hadn't heard from in a while. Eve loves Kermit, Savolainen said, so she decided to dedicate a tweet to her in hopes of lifting her mood.
i miss eve i hope she's doing well nd is safe
Savolainen furled Kermit up in a depleted position and tweeted, "I miss Eve."
"I was wondering if she was doing all right," she said of her friend, who hadn't been active on Twitter. "I felt like taking that pic and posting it for her, I thought maybe it could cheer her up when she gets back."
And that was the documented birth of Sad Kermit.
(Eve eventually saw and faved the tweet.)
Soon, her Sad Kermit photo started to spread and be co-opted into people's depressing and poetic captions. Savolainen believes her pictures have really "fed" the Kermit meme mania.
when ur friends are enjoying ur increased sense of humor but it's actually a coping mechanism & the result of ur he… https://t.co/T5vELzY5MK
"Kermit has always been very popular as a meme," Savolainen explained. "They're very relatable on some level."
She said she's stumbled upon her Kermit photos being used on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, all garnering thousands of engagement each.
"It makes me feel very happy that people find my memes useful," Savolainen said in direct response to finding her Kermit photo used for a joke on Instagram that had 100,000 likes.
Savolainen has lately been retweeting all of her favorite jokes from strangers who've whimsically found her archive of Kermit puppet memes. She even sent BuzzFeed News a personalized one.
And a special Sad Kermit one, re-created — HOLIDAY EDITION.
Tbh, this pretty much encapsulates the spirit of the holidays this year. "When Mariah Carey's 'All I Want for Christmas' comes on as you're reading the news."
