An Interview With the 'This Is Fine' Guy 10 Years After He Changed the Internet Forever

Meet KC Green, the man behind the meme.

The “This Is Fine” meme. All images courtesy KC Green.

Before I became a hard-hitting politics blogger, my first very big kid job (internship) was blogging about internet memes and culture. This was in early 2016, when Twitter hit a fever pitch for reaction images, right before it careened face-first into obsessing over meme namesakes themselves (Ken Bone, Salt Bae, Hurt Bae, Bhad Bhabie, we didn’t start the fire).

It was in this job that I often stumbled upon the viral two-panel image of a dog trapped in a kitchen on fire, a very relevant meme about terrified complacency. It spoke to me, and many others, deeply. Yes, this is what the hellfire of the 24-hour news cycle felt like. But the meme itself was a comfort — a way to call attention to the absurdity a situation while bonding over the pain it brings.

Earlier this month, cartoonist KC Green’s comic “On Fire” behind the meme turned 10 years old, marking a near-decade of people commiserating over a dog trapped in a house fire. But despite its viral success, Green wishes that a better world existed — one where people wouldn’t need to find catharsis in a cartoon dog’s tragedy.

For the cartoon’s 10-year anniversary, Green and I chatted about how “On Fire” came to be, how the comic’s virality changed his relationship with his work, and what he’s learned about antidepressants and memes in the years since.