I don’t know what it is, but inspirational memes (and office posters) make me feel sad. Depressed. Sometimes annoyed or downright angry. Demotivational versions of the same, though, have always brought me joy. I don’t wallow in sadness or revel in insulting others, but the humor of them brightens my day. It reminds me that not everyone is simple enough to be inspired by a non-contextual quote or cute kitten, and that gives me hope.
When I was a younger man, I loved the Demotivators catalog (soon after, despair.com, but I got physical catalogs in the mail back then), and began slowly and quietly replacing all the posters around the office of my first real job with sarcastic versions. The only people who noticed were ones who took the same joy in them that I did, and all of them were still in place when I quit.
Fast forward a decade and I’ve started creating “Dimspirations.” I have over a hundred of them now. Some better than others, obviously, but I’ll take some credit for perseverance. You can see the lot by checking the #dimspirations hashtag on Instagram, at least until someone else starts using it and pollutes that stream. I use the same hashtag on Twitter and Facebook, and you can follow a hashtag on any of these services if you’d like to see more as they come out.
I’ve taken a few of my favorites and created wallpaper versions of them. High res in both 16:9 and 4:3 versions. Do with them what you will, but I’d ask that you leave the “#dimspirations” tag on them and give credit where you feel credit is due. I hope someday to find a way to sell these for actual money, despite giving a bunch of high-res versions away. Printing and shipping is a headache, though, so don’t hold your breath for too long.
You can download them all in a zip file below, or from the wallpaper page in the “other stuff” section of this site. (Where miscellaneous downloads and broken experiments go. It’s basically the messy attic of BrettTerpstra.com.)
If these offend your sensibilities, then they’re not for you. Just know that they make some of us feel better than your “hang in there” poster ever will.
