4.28.10 - 9:00AM
- by
Jay Hathaway

How To Write Awesome Captions for Advice Dog and Friends

topic:
Humor
MemeTracker
Animals
How To

There's an Advice Animal for any occasion! Advice Dog was the original, with his lovable puppy face and his terrible puppy recommendations. He was an instant classic on 4chan and soon spun off into a whole family of hilarious animals, including Courage Wolf, Socially Awkward Penguin and Foul Bachelor Frog.

Each of these characters specializes in a different type of advice, but some people just don't seem to get how they work. Using MemeGenerator to make an Advice Animal picture is easy, but writing a good caption is hard. In fact, a lot of the Advice Animal images out there just aren't that funny.

Never fear, citizens of the web! Urlesque is here to help, with a handy guide to doing these popular advice memes right.

Advice Dog

The key to Advice Dog is that all of his advice is absolutely terrible and usually extremely dangerous. What did you expect? He's a dog. There are two formulas to Advice Dog success.

Number 1: The first line should be a piece of terrible advice and the second line should be a lie about the wonderful results. Make sure they relate in a way that only a gullible idiot would believe.

WIN: "Eat crayons. Poop rainbows."

Number 2: The first line should be good or harmless advice. The second line should be the most dangerous, absurd or stupid thing you could possibly do next.

WIN: "Buy pizza. Pay with snakes."

advice dog says buy pizza pay with snakes

Courage Wolf

Courage Wolf is fearless and powerful and he wants you to be fearless and powerful too. Courage Wolf doesn't actually give "advice," so much as he screams at you about either how awesome you are (or how awesome you should aspire to be). To write a great Courage Wolf caption, just take the kind of impossibly tough thing you might see in one of those Chuck Norris Facts and add the incredible ferocity of a wolf.

WIN: "Awesome is a synonym for you."

WIN: "Bite off more than you can chew. Then chew it."

courage wolf bites off more than he can chew, then chews it

Socially Awkward Penguin

Poor Socially Awkward Penguin just can't catch a break. He really wants to make friends and get along with other people, but he never has a clue what to do in social situations. Sometimes, people just ignore him altogether.

Sure, Socially Awkward Penguin is tragic, but he's funny because he's relatable. You don't have to be completely inept to have a few cringeworthy moments in your life, so draw on your own embarrassing experiences to write a good Socially Awkward Penguin caption.

WIN: "Offer fist pound, get handshake. Strange hand movements follow."

WIN: Be polite, hold the door. They're slightly too far away.

Socially Awkward Penguin fails at holding the door

Foul Bachelor Frog

To understand Foul Bachelor Frog, you need to imagine someone so slovenly that he wears whatever he can find on the floor, eats out of any dish that has a clean spot on it and blows off all of his classes to watch porno and play XBOX. Foul Bachelor Frog drinks huge amounts of the cheapest beer he can find, even if it's warm. And it's 9 a.m. On a weekday.

Creating a really good Foul Bachelor Frog caption requires thinking of something so lazy it's disgusting and then taking it one gross step further. For more FBF insight, check out Urlesque's in-depth analysis of the Foul Bachelor Frog phenomenon.

WIN: "Not sure if cup on counter is clean or dirty. I'm a gambling man."

WIN: "Dinner. Dip bread in anything runnier than bread."

Philosoraptor

Philosophy plus velociraptor equals Philosoraptor. This character was originally a t-shirt design by Sam Smith of lonelydinosaur.com, but it's evolved into one of the most popular advice meme characters. Philosoraptor's schtick is asking rhetorical questions that sound deep, but are actually completely ridiculous.

He's probably the toughest advice character to write for, but there are a couple of tricks you can use. First, always use a question. Philosoraptor apparently thinks asking questions makes him more like Socrates. Second, totally cheat by stealing an absurd question from pop culture.

This line from a Killers song made for a winning Philosoraptor:

WIN: "Are we human? Or are we dancer?"