You guys may not know this, but my father, myself, and my eldest daughter all attended art schools at some point. We're a multigenerational family of artists and musicians - and yes, our house is exactly as "interesting" as you might think. You know that stereotype about artists being a little on the weird side ? ... Yeaaaaaaahhhh....
So when Reddit user I_Have_No_Clout asked
let's just say I got to go on a fun little walk down memory lane with the family. For a while there I had an obsession with taking the cutie marks off of My Little Pony dolls and re-painting them into things like zombies, murder victims, skeletons ... ya know, the usual stuff little girls are into.
These art teachers, parents, and others who spend some serious time with kids shared the sorts of things their little artists come up with - and honestly, it's inspiring in a weird sort of way. Might be time to break out the canvases!
Menstrual Majesty
One of my students, a 6 year old girl, went on a phase of drawing her family members with periods. She had probably just learned about it. So it was just loads of family pictures with everybody cheerfully standing around in pools of blood with blood on their pants.
It was unnerving to try and explain to any visiting teachers and parents why there was routinely a picture on some wall with her standing in a pool of red.
Mommy Pterodactyl
Giphy
One of my students, a small kid, drew a giant pterodactyl with pendulous, red-nippled breasts. When I asked him what he had drawn, he said, "This is my mommy."
Yugo Kid
This is not creepy, but for me weirdly cute. My significant other held a few art classes in primary school. There was this kid with issues, couldn't speak well, couldn't write, horrible at every subject, but he could do some damn amazing drawings. Colors of them, perspective, measures, this kid was a proper talent.
Here's the catch - he was really into one old Yugoslavian type of car called Yugo 45, he was obsessed with it. So all of his drawings were Yugo 45 themed somehow. Christmas drawing with Santa Claus pulling presents from Yugo's trunk, war themed picture of Yugo 45 being run over by a tank, summer picture of Yugo as a submarine, while on beach in the distance you can see a couple sunbathing on, guess fricking what, Yugo's roof.
Drawings were absolutely great, but what always got me amazed the most is how this little fellow was able to pull every goddamn subject to be themed about Yugo. We loved that kid. And we hope that he drives that car one day.
Save The Tigers
I think I creeped out my art teacher. We were given the theme "jungle animals" and so I drew my favourite animal at the time which was tigers. I was obsessed, my whole bedroom was tiger themed.
I was also in a bit of an emo phase so I decided to make my drawing about tigers being poached and endangered; so I drew a sort of montage of tigers roaring while covered in blood, standing in a lake of blood with the words "save me" written in my best scratchy horror looking font I could muster, all over the page.
He walked around class and looked at all our drawings and when he came to mine he said nothing, exhaled out of his nose and moved along.
Gangster Elmo
I used to work in behavioral healthcare with children. One of the clients that I worked with had a talent for drawing. He was obsessed with Sesame Street and... gangster rap.
He was this developmentally delayed, skinny white boy who would rap while drawing Elmo and Cookie Monster getting into a shoot out with the cops. He did this while at school and the school counselor insisted on a safety evaluation to make sure he wasn't going to hurt anyone. He was never violent, just liked gangster Elmo.
Francis Frosting The Eclairs
Giphy
I suppose it's more funny and wholesome than it is weird, but I wanted to share nonetheless. I had a student we will call Francis. I taught him for three years, from grade one through three (he then transferred to a different school).
Francis was fascinating and totally odd - but in a great way. He was hyper-intelligent and light years ahead of his classmates. He had very specific and unusual tastes for a young kid - for example, his favorite show was Ken Burns' Civil War documentary and his favorite snack was brie cheese. He quoted literature. He studied US astronauts and could (and often did) rattle off details about their lives ("James Lovell's favorite food is shrimp cocktail!"). He was one of my favorite students.
During one particular art class, I created a picnic scene in the middle of the classroom and was teaching the kids how to draw still life. The one rule was that they had to draw what they saw in front of them. Francis being Francis, he grew bored with the lesson and took his picnic drawing in a slightly different direction...
When I asked him what he was doing, he said (read with a very heavy lisp) "I'm making an upper-class picnic, with high quality, organic items. There's suckling pig - look, there's an apple in its mouth! There's gourmet lobster, cherries, shrimps, Swiss almond cake, escargots, sparkling water, and cocktail wienies!"
Me: (trying to stifle my laughter) "And who is that person?"
Student: "That's Mr. Carson."
Me: "Who is Mr. Carson?"
Student: "The BUTLER, of COURSE" (rolls eyes, sighs heavily). "Do we have a chocolate-y brown crayon? I need to frost the eclairs."
The Entire Process
A girl, 9 yrs, was doodling, and looking at the drawing afterwards I could immediately see her process:
1.She drew a little dancing dude, arms and legs apart
2. She drew him a little wiener
3. She freaked out upon seeing the wiener. Her first idea to fix it? add more wieners!
4. She must've really freaked once she saw the penis-udder-frankenstein she had created, so she switched to a marker and drew a skirt over the wiener, added a girly hairdo to the head and added some eyelashes.
Hands All Over
The assignment was about making a painting about something that's been in the news. Blonde haired blue eyed girl (and ex model) picked Epstein. She painted a blonde haired girl with blue eyes with hands all over her body...
More sad than weird or creepy. But it still heavily alarmed people.
- streep36
A Little Dismemberment
I taught at an art summer camp for 8-10 year olds when I was 17 and a little boy drew himself having his penis cut off (He proudly explained this to me so I'm not just misinterpreting a kid's drawing). Reported it to the supervisor because I thought it might be a sign of something going on at home and she just shrugged and had it hung up with the rest.
Sweeney Todd
Had a student who only drew Sweeney Todd related things. She was special needs and it was her special interest. Unfortunately she refused to even be in the class if she wasn't able to make her projects Sweeney Todd related. And so, I had to present to the parents a whole line of beautiful proportioned face studies and then one montage of a guy getting his head chopped off and eaten.
Always Been A Dragon
My Sister is a 4th-grade Teacher.
She asked her students to draw a picture of themselves. One Girl drew a dragon. My sister asked her "Are you a dragon?" and the girl with a straight face says:
"In my mind, I have always been a dragon, it's why my family hates me."
- obievil
The Best Possible Outcome
During my very first teaching job, a girl in grade 2 drew a picture of herself hanging by the neck with people laughing and pointing at her ☹ That was very disturbing. I can't even imagine thinking of that when I was 7. This girl also hardly ever came to school, and when she did, she'd show up at noon with a lunchable in hand. So she had basically no friends because she was never there.
I showed her aunt (who had custody of her) and she was less concerned than I thought she should be. Ended up calling child services and after I made that call, she was at school every day on time. Coming to school consistently was the best thing for her. She made friends and her reading level went up.
The Project
I used to teach music and art at a catholic school. My last year there, we had a program where 5th grade would draw a picture and the high school class would turn it into a sculpture. One of my 5th grade girls was obsessed with Pennywise, the evil clown from It and drew him.
Now imagine my shock when, a few weeks later, I turn the light on in my room and a 7 foot tall evil clown was starring right at me. High schooler went wild with this one and it was just terrifying.
"Booblies"
I once had some kids draw out their favourite superheroes and there was this one kid (6) who drew hulk and it was nice and all except I noticed these big circles on his chest.
So I asked the kid about it and with the biggest smile on his face he responded, "booblies" I didn't know what to do man.
- looppIV
Elmo's Revenge
Giphy
For a perspective drawing, two of my 8th grade students did a collab. One drew a peaceful town with Elmo in a window singing the classic "La la la" music. And a TV saying "Escaped killer" with a mugshot of Elmo.
The other student makes the same town but with radiation and bombs dropping from the sky. Then has an Elmo silhouette in the street saying "Elmo's world now."
They titled it "Elmo's revenge"
It connects people, ideas, senses or humor, creativity! Yes, we've got our fair share of deviants, murderers, and trashbag people, but we've also got decades of wonder to celebrate.
Newbies like to think using the internet for awesomeness is something they came up with, but the old heads are here to tell you the internet has ALWAYS been a complicated crash course in the coolest stuff ever.
So let's hop in the wayback machine and get our nostalgia on.
Reddit user ransom0374 asked:
"What do you miss from early internet times?"
So let's take that walk down memory lane, or if you're new-ish here on planet Earth, this is going to be a fun little "history" lesson.
If you're uncertain where you fall, here's a test:
"Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger..."
If you finished the song, you're probably going to remember quite a few of these...
Away Messages
"AIM away messages saying stupid stuff like 'BRB going to get some bagel bites.' "
"Don't forget to update your personal profile with Blink 182 lyrics and the initials of your school sweetheart and some ASCII. Browse for a new inappropriate buddy icon and strike up a convo with SmarterChild"
GiphyThe Unknown
"I miss the wild unknown frontier that the internet was."
"It seemed there was so much discovery to be had on the internet, and if you were good at the internet everyone thought of you as 'Hackerman' and you were like a God amongst your peers."
"It seems like there isn't anything 'new' on the internet anymore. No discoveries to be made."
GiphyThe Irony Is Not Lost On Us
"Variety. There's a popular tweet that says something like 'the internet has turned into four websites where on each one people share screenshots of the other three.' "
"I miss when you could search a term and there would be dozens of sites dedicated to it or forums especially for it. Now it's just ads, Wikipedia, and Reddit."
"Oh, and not having ads shoved down your throat every time you search a term or navigate to a page!"
"I know there were pop ups and banners, which weren't any better. But there was a sweet spot."
"There was a few years there where you could Google something and half the first page WASN'T sponsored ads that had nothing to do with what you looked up. And you could go to a website and it DIDN'T block the page with a full screen ad asking for your email to join their mailing list or save 10% on their merchandise."
GiphyFiguring It Out
"That all the webpages were just random people trying to figure out HTML."
"There really wasn't a corporate presence at all. It was just a place for people to experiment."
"You could click on a button and make a cardboard hand wave at someone's cats. You could dispense a coke from a machine in some dorm. It was dumb and fun."
GiphyEndless Learning
"The learning was endless."
"There were almost an infinite source of information from all over the world. If you wanted to find something all you had to do was search for it in Ask Jeeves or whatever and you'd find any website that had ever mentioned that thing."
"There were more than 10 different websites. And at least it didn't feel like I was being forced to sign up for a subscription after every click."
"There were so many fun, cute stores to shop. Now it feels like everyone dresses and decorates the same."
"I miss a lot of things about the early internet. I'm probably wrong, but it just felt safer than it does now?"
GiphyMaking Friends
"I was in my late teens when the internet was becoming accessible to everyone. Our one household computer was in the kitchen & facing in a way so anyone coming in could see your screen."
"I remember looking at someone's website and my Dad passing by to get something to eat, asking me if the person on the website was my friend."
"I miss those old days! The internet seemed endless & friendly."
GiphyA Base Level For Participation
"Most people were smart."
"In the early days (by far) most people on the internet were in college, either as a teacher or student. Beyond that, people had to to be in a lab or make their computer talk to a connected computer which was not so easy in the old days."
"It acted as a sort of intelligence barrier one needed clear to participate in internet things."
- tsoldrin
"Higher barrier to entry."
"I remember the fond days of SLIP and Trumpet Winsock when you had to know at least a little about tech to get on and participate."
"There was still stupidity, but it just wasn't as loud as it is now."
- dramboxf
"In the very very early days, pre-AOL, you needed skill and knowledge to get online."
"Then AOL came onto the scene an d anyone could get online at the push of a button."
GiphyGo Away Now
"I miss when what happened on the internet, stayed on the internet."
"You could turn off the beige box and go about the rest of your day without it affecting you."
"The fact that is only existed on a big computer in the house, as long as no-one was on the phone. It wasn't some all-encompassing thing."
- dienices
"The internet not following me around. When you logged off, you effectively put the internet away."
GiphyIt Used To Be...
"How people used to treat it."
"The internet was not just a novelty, but an amazing piece of technology that let anyone share anything. It was so wholesome and loving, with everyone still being amazed at what we could do now."
"Now? There's so many websites that are designed to make you angry and radicalize your beliefs. It's quantity over quality."
"There was a time when nobody on Reddit shared politics, when Facebook was for socializing, when YouTube was where people uploaded stuff they were passionate about."
GiphyWe Used To Love Yahoo
"Yahoo Answers"
"Yahoo Pool"
- inaclick
"I can't remember what it was called, but Yahoo had this great music video program where it showed popular artists, and some very unknown folks."
"I discovered some of my favorite artists having it play in the background all the time."
"Launchcast/Yahoo Radio. It was revolutionary for music streaming and the 1-5 star system worked really well. I preferred it over Pandora's up/down system."
GiphyOn a personal level, I want to go on record and say MusicMatch was the greatest music program in the history of life.
It just was.
I will die on this hill.
It was dopeness in all forms. MusicMatch Jukebox? Dope. Yahoo MusicMatch? Dope.
So what relics from Ye Olde Internet are you passionate about? Sound off in the comments!
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The dogs owner shared the video along with a post asking professionals to shed some light on why he does what he does.
Owner-obliviousness as they gushed about how adorable it was made the awkward even better.
The owner explained the Frenchie often makes aggressive eye contact and licks his lips while he "plays air guitar"—which is what the family calls it—and how cute & funny they all find the behavior.
GiphyThe video was the dog, casually chilling, using his paw to rub the tip of his penis while staring awkwardly at the camera and licking his lips like a pup possessed.
Three hundred and fifteen laugh-reacts—at the time that I saw it—and only three comments:
1. a vet explaining that the behavior showed in the video was the dog masturbating while making direct eye contact
2. the owner giving a simple "thank you" and
3. the admins of the group closing the comments.
So, why am I sharing this with you?
Because Reddit user Drakmamman asked:
"Dog owners of reddit, what the dog doin?"
... and so now you get this whole article just so I had an excuse to tell y'all about a furiously fapping Frenchie, 'cause somebody else needed to know about him.
I cackled for a good 20 minutes imagining the family getting all giddy about their dog "playing air guitar"—making the little air guitar meedly squeedly noises while he played, maybe even playing along thinking they're enjoying a fun little game—but they're really just been giving a hair metal soundtrack to their dogs stroke sesh.
Something tells me now the owner knows what "air guitar" really is, they're not likely to rush and tell Reddit all about how they've been gathering as a family to watch cause it's just so cute.
That's what I'm here for.
Anyway, here's the stuff other people's dogs are up to. It's not fapping—or if it is, the owners aren't telling Reddit.
Partner Preference
Giphy"Wife just came home with the baby. Dog is acting like she's been abandoned for years running up and down, barking and jumping on everything."
"They'd only been out an hour and I was with her the whole time." - Single_Goose7015
"My dog does this too when my wife comes home. Like what am I, chopped liver?" - jackof47trades
"I feel your pain. My dog started howling mournfully when my partner went back to work last week… I was right there!" - TreatOutside
"Staring at the door waiting for the only human he cares about to come home (obviously not me)" - SnarkyRedhead
Herding Cats
Giphy"Probably trying to herd the cats."
"He's a border collie mix who's afraid of goats and sheep, but even after six years of living with them he still thinks he can control where the cats go."
"He's a good boy, he's very persistent, but not terribly bright sometimes." - TokesNotHigh
"After 8 years our border collie still herds the cats, and the vacuum." - psychologicaluse28
"Big heart, small brain. I have one of those dogs too. They are the sweetest." - Technobucket
Wretched Existence
Giphy"She has flung herself flat across the bed and is playing dead, quiet except for the occasional pitiful whine. Every now and then she lifts her head up and fixes a desperate look upon me, silently begging for release from her wretched existence."
"She's a bit overdramatic about having to wear a cone. The issue is an abrasion on a toe that she won't stop licking, which is making it worse."
"I've been alternating between bandaging it and having her wear a cone. She's been consistently a drama queen." - halfinboxes
One Hour
Giphy"Staring at me because their dinner time is in one hour and they need to start letting me know that, in an hour, they need to eat...in an hour, so I better not forget...cuz they're hungry, which is why they're staring at me...and it's almost dinner time."
"Just one more hour, And they want to make sure I don't forget. Because maybe I will."
"So, they need to remind me. By staring at me. Every day. One hour before dinner." - MotherOfFred
A Little "Light" Exercise
Giphy"Mine loves light reflected off watches or phones. And loves lasers."
"It's sunny and he sees light on the wall so he is bothering me to use my watch or phone so he can chase the light. I've spent the last hour doing it."
"I even got him a cat laser toy that's automatic for him and he runs himself tired as all hell with it. But he is STILL asking for it."
"Used the laser toy also too, so he is panting dripping tongue and still wants to play more..." - boomgoon
Vicious Predators
Giphy"Last night my dogs chased down and killed a rabbit in the backyard. They are usually so gentle; this was weird and unexpected."
"I watched the whole thing helpless because it was so fast. The rabbit screamed, it was insane."
"Now, I'm watching them sleep on my couch and can't help but think they just murdered someone."
"They are just vicious predators, right here, in my house. On my couch."
"But they snuggly as f*ck. This trips me out." - Atheist_Redditor
A Problematic Princess
Giphy"We have two chihuahuas. One is a 15 year old (quite appropriately) named Princess and one is a one year old named Charlie."
"Both have their own dog beds on the couch since they are spoiled."
"When Princess is feeling particularly moody or like asserting her dominance, she will drag Charlie's bed into her bed and lay on top of BOTH of them and snarl at him if he comes close to her personal space bubble/bed mountain."
"And when we tell her she can't have both beds and put his bed back to the side, she just glares at us. Lol." - mslm90
Shoe-nanigans
Giphy"She's currently in her cage resting after her great adventure."
"She managed to get upstairs and grab a hold of one of my shoes. Not just any old shoe, but one of the shoes I am planning to wear this weekend for my wedding."
"After running around, she dropped the shoe to chew on a shirt - at which point she was cornered, and then brought downstairs."
"Pup and shoe are both unharmed and doing well. My nerves, not so much." - still_interesting23
So ... what's YOUR dog been up to lately?
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