Pixelated Boat

About

Pixelated Boat or pixelatedboat is the Twitter alias of cartoonist Ben Ward, the writer and artist of the One Giant Hand webcomic. Online, Ward is for photoshopped versions of tweets and news articles, which see politicians, celebrities and other public persons appear absurd or foolish. Perhaps most famously, Ward is credited for coining the Milkshake Duck.

Online History

On January 28th, 2015, Ward joined Twitter under the name @PixelatedBoat.^[1] As of September 2017, he has amassed more than 130,000 followers.

On June 12th, 2016, @pixelatedboat coined the term "Milkshake Duck," in reference to the internet's breif love affair with a new public person only to discover something distasteful about their past. He tweeted,^[2] "The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the duck is racist." As of September 2017, the post (shown below) received more than 11,000 retweets and 26,000 likes.

Three days later, on June 15th, on Tumblr,^[5] Ward published the first entry of his One Giant Hand webcomic. The four-panel parody of the 1976 film Taxi Driver (shown below, left) garnered more than 80 notes on Tumblr and 180 likes on Instagram.

The next month, on July 4th, he published an episode of One Giant Hand entitled "The one where Ross fails Tʜᴇ Hᴏʟᴇ," a parody of the sitcom Friends. On Tumblr,^[6] as of September 2017, the post (shown below, right)is his most popular, garnering more than 20,000 notes.

Several months later, Ward started the Fake Mark Zuckerberg Facebook Posts with a Tweet^[7] parodying the Facebook C.E.O.'s trip to Alabama by photoshopping Zuckerberg's original post to say that he forced an old man to eat a newspaper. The post (shown below) received more than 19,100 likes and 7,200 retweets over the next seven months.

Reputation

On June 22nd, 2017, Oxford Dictionaries wrote an entry about Milkshake Duck in their "On the Radar" column, saying it was rising in ubiquity. They wrote,

"Over time, Milkshake Duck has become a term that can be used to refer to any person or thing that gains fleeting popularity for something seemingly pleasing, only for a deeper dig to reveal unfortunate truths about their past or opinions, typically a connection to or history of some form of bigotry."

Five days later, June 27th, 2017, The New York Times^[3] wrote a story about Milkshake Duck, chronicling its rise in the public's consciousness.

Related Memes

Milkshake Duck

Milkshake Duck is an internet slang term referring to a representation of a viral internet star who is briefly adored by the public prior to the discovery of their distasteful or offensive past.

Fake Mark Zuckerberg Facebook Posts

Fake Mark Zuckerberg Facebook Posts, also known as Zuck Memes, refer to screenshots of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's public Facebook posts which have been digitally altered, often making him appear as a tyrannical megalomaniac, robot or reptilian humanoid pretending to be human.

The Gorilla Channel

The Gorilla Channel refers to a parody excerpt of Michael Wolff's Trump tell-all book Fire and Fury, which created a controversy when some believed the excerpt to be real.

Search Interest

External References