Entry Four - How Meg and Duffy Came to Be

How the Adventures of Meg and Duffy Came to be

          Hello everyone, and welcome to the third full-length blog entry for the Adventure of Meg and Duffy! Today, I, Thomas, would like to discuss some of the inspirations behind our campaign.

          Originally, I was going to discuss how I got Meg and Duffy. However, an entry like that would be redundant, seeing that I have already discussed the topic on other parts of the blog. That being said, I hope you'll appreciate this insight into how the Adventures of Meg and Duffy came to be.

Part One: LOLcats

          The year was 2007. I was in elementary school, and my only exposure to the internet was several train websites that I'd visit. However, all of this would change when my mom introduced me to LOLcats. At first, I had no idea what to make of them. At their core, they were pictures of cats with misspelled captions. Besides, funny cat pictures have been a staple of human culture for generations. After a while, these pictures would sink into me and I began to appreciate them more. In fact, it was not uncommon to find me, my sister, and my mom huddled around the computer looking at LOLcats after school.

Simpler times, simpler humor

          It was safe to say that with these daily viewings, the three of us were hooked. In fact, when the I Can Has Cheezburger book came out in 2008, my mom purchased a copy for our family to enjoy. As such, my love for LOLcats would continue to grow. By this point, I was already in intermediate school. I was more tech-savvy, and I was even given a school computer in the 6th grade. Plus, I also had friend who enjoyed LOLcats. As such, we all decided to make our own LOLcats in between classes. Eventually, we had exhausted all our capabilities with LOLcats and we stopped making them once we were in middle school.

          Despite this, LOLcats had a profound impact on me as an internet user. For one thing, LOLcats helped introduce me to the world of memes and internet humor. These two things have become my most favorite types of internet content, and I have managed to broaden my horizons because of the people I have met through meme culture. Also, LOLcats helped show me the potential that pet-related content had on the internet. As such, I knew that when I was formulating my social media campaign, I wanted it to be based around pets.

Part Two: Mookie and Sam

          As someone who has been browsing the internet since 2002, let me just say that we have all encountered things that seemed like they were previously unseen. Some of this content can be rather obscene, while other examples may be underrated. An example of the latter would be Mookie and Sam. For those who are unaware, Mookie and Sam was an online web series that was created by Kyle MacLachlan in 2006. If you were wondering why that name sounds familiar, Kyle MacLachlan is an actor who played Dan Cooper in Twin Peaks. Anyway, Mookie and sam chronicled the adventures of MacLachlan's dogs as they lived and worked together in New York City.

Here's the first episode for Mookie and Sam. Mookie's probably the calmest Jack Russell Terrier I've ever seen!

          When I discovered Mookie and Sam back in 2007, I immediately became attached to them and their personalities. I think what made me enjoy it was the fact that Mookie and Sam thought that they were humans, despite the fact that they were dogs. As such, each episode of Mookie and Sam had a distinct LOLcats-esque feel, where it was simply two pets doing things that humans typically do. Unfortunately, the last episode of Mookie and Sam came out in 2008. As a result, I moved on to other online content.

Here's the final episode for Mookie and Sam. Quite a heartfelt way to end the series if you ask me.

          In 2019, I was provided the opportunity to start a social media campaign. As stated before, I decided to go with a pet theme because of my love for dogs, cats, and pet-related content. Originally, I intended for the social media campaign to be like the Dogist, where I would feature dogs that I encountered while walking around the neighborhood. However, I quickly realized that my campaign would lack a sense of identity. As such, I thought back to the pet content I enjoyed. During this brainstorm, I vaguely remembered Mookie and Sam, and how well their personalities played off of each other.

         After reacquainting myself with the series, I figured that my campaign could be a spiritual successor to Mookie and Sam. After all, Meg and Duffy has always been an interesting pair, and theu could easily play off of each other online like Mookie and Sam. Furthermore, the idea to base Meg and Duffy off of Mookie and Sam came from the idea to make a tribute to the show. As I said before, the last Mookie and Sam episode came out in 2008, which was over a decade ago. Also, the Mookie and Sam Facebook page has not been updated since 2015, and Kyle MacLachlan and his wife appear to be focusing on a new dog named Elvis. Given these facts, I am inclined to believe that Mookie and Sam are no longer with us. As such, by creating the Adventures of Meg and Duffy and explaining how it is based on Mookie and Sam, I hope to introduce more internet surfers to it and expose them to a little-known piece of internet pet content.

Mookie, Sam, no matter where you two are, thank you for the inspiration.

Part Three: Other Sources of Inspiration

         As the title of this next part suggests, I'll be covering some other sources of inspiration for the Adventures of Meg and Duffy that have had a smaller impact when it came to creating the concept. One of these sources includes various pet personalities that I follow on social media. Some of these include Bilbo the Cat, Alex the Honking Bird, and Tofu-Chan the Shiba Inu. While LOLcats showed me how to do pet content back in 2007, the aforementioned pet accounts showed me how to do pet content back in 2019, where social media is more ingrained with the online experience. In fact, before I came up with the Meg and Duffy "brand," I was going to feature birds and reptiles alongside dogs and cats. I eventually dropped these topics when I discovered that the former pets aren't as mainstream as the latter pets. I should also stress that I have never owned a bird or a reptile, so me talking about them would not have come off as genuine.

At the end of the day, shouldn't we all strive to be as wholesome as Tofu-chan???

         As generic as this sounds, I would also like to cite my mom as an inspiration behind the Adventures of Meg and Duffy. For as long as I can remember, my mom has always enjoyed giving our pets a "voice" that's based around their personality. I always enjoyed her pet voices, and it helped me show that pets can be expressive without talking themselves.

Conclusion

          Going back and looking at these sources of inspiration was an absolute treat for me. It's crazy to look back on LOLcats and Mookie and Sam and see how much pet-related internet content has changed over the years. Would I say these artifacts are better than today's pet content? No, but I still believe that they have earned their place in internet history. Furthermore, I hope that with Meg and Duffy, I can help contribute to the evolution of pet-related internet content, so that Meg, Duffy, and I can serve as inspiration for future content developers. With that said, thank you all so much for reading this new blog post, and we hope to see you soon!