Kue the Dinosaur

Origin

Kue the Dinosaur is a drawn character discovered on DeviantArt in 2012. At first he was widely mistaken for a dragon rather than a dinosaur.

What made him spread was a single facial expression. The face is frozen somewhere between a smile and a grimace, so viewers could attach whatever emotion they liked to it. Users edited the image into versions matching their own feelings, and the edits circulated alongside the original.

Spread

The main venue was Facebook. Both the edited pictures and the untouched one were used as profile photos, and above all as ‘mfw’ images — my face when — for expressing a reaction. A single character effectively functioned as an entire reaction-image set.

As the following grew quickly, the original creator, Fayzon ‘Toasty’ O’Brien, set up a group called Cult of Dinosaurs where fans could share their fan art. It is a case of a creator opening a space for the fandom rather than trying to stop the memeification.

Usage

• Standing in for your own face in a given situation, in the ‘mfw’ format
• As a profile picture
• Edits that alter the expression slightly to convey degrees of feeling

Since it is a single character drawing with no dialogue and no setting that became a reaction image, it is hard to recognise outside the Facebook culture of the period without the context.

Sources

• Know Your Meme, ‘Kue the Dinosaur’ — the 2012 DeviantArt discovery; the early mistaking for a dragon; the Facebook spread and the mfw usage; the Cult of Dinosaurs group created by Fayzon ‘Toasty’ O’Brien
• Know Your Meme, ‘Kue the Dinosaur’ image gallery — a collection of edits and fan art