Emoji Lore
This Is Fine: The Dog Is Not Fine, and He Never Was
The most useful emoji in any work chat is a dog sipping coffee in a burning building. It comes from a real comic, drawn by a real person, about a real feeling. Here is the whole story.
By Miles Crawford
Six Panels, and the Internet Only Uses Two
On January 9, 2013, cartoonist KC Green published strip #648 of his webcomic Gunshow, titled "On Fire." A dog sits at a table with a coffee mug while his kitchen burns around him. "This is fine," the dog says. Then, panel by panel, he melts. The internet kept the first two panels, where everything is under control, and discarded the four panels where it kills him. That is either fitting or a bad sign about everyone.
The dog even has a name: Question Hound, a recurring Gunshow character Green used as a vessel for his own anxieties. Nobody calls him that. He is simply The Dog Now.
It Was Autobiographical
Green was 25 and working on his mental health when he drew it. On the comic's tenth anniversary he told NPR: "I was just like, is this OK? Am I doing good? Am I supposed to ignore everything else? It kind of feels like you just have to ignore all of the insanity around you like a burning house. And the comic just ended up writing itself after that." He kept it vague on purpose so people could read their own disaster into it. Mission accomplished, unfortunately for everyone.
The Spread
The two cropped panels surfaced on 4chan's retro games board in April 2013, hit r/funny in January 2014 as "accurate representation of me dealing with university stress," and then colonized finals-week Instagram accounts, per Know Your Meme's timeline. On July 25, 2016, the official GOP account tweeted the panels as commentary on the Democratic convention. Green, who had not been asked, said so publicly, and political cartoon site The Nib answered with a version Green drew himself starring a Republican elephant. By 2018, Senator Richard Burr was quoting the dog in an interview about Russian election interference: "That's not fine." A sitting senator, doing meme literacy, on the record.
The Artist Would Like to Stop Now
Green also gave the internet Staredad and Mother of God, but the fire dog is the one that followed him home. He has said people tell him the comic brought them comfort, and he is glad, and also he would like to retire it: "Working past it, not just accepting it but working past it, trying to grow from it - that is my jam." The dog remains employed full-time by every workplace on Earth, with no retirement plan.
Why He Works at Work
The deploy broke prod. The client moved the deadline up. The invite says "quick sync" and has fourteen attendees. You do not need to type a sentence. The meme pack has him, and the emoji maker can rebuild him around your team's specific fire.