An interview with the founder of belligerent image blog, Brown Cardigan

As part of our month-long feature on the people behind some of the best online publishing ventures around, we’ve spoke to some of the most important big dogs of online content publishing. But where there’s big dogs, there’s also weird smelly dogs, and that’s how I like to think of Brown Cardigan. They’ve been providing millions of people with stuff to attach to the bottom of emails for years, and have been churning out and spreading some of the most memorable memes in recent history. And so the anonymous team behind Brown Cardigan tell us about their audience, how the internet’s changed the world and the story of their “wordless mood-board for perverted immature grown folks.” Enjoy!

Who are you?

Anonymous proto-bloggers and potential venture capitalists (VC) from Bondi, Australia.

How would you describe Brown Cardigan to someone who had no idea what it was?

A wordless mood-board for perverted immature grown folks. Blogservational humour at its finest/worst. It’s one of the key reasons Lord Alfie Gore hasn’t switched off the Web (World Wide) yet.

How, in your opinion, has the internet changed the world for the better? 

It gives everyone an opinion, like it or not #opinions are what make for some great internet. YouTube/Hypebeast comments, 4Chan, 5Chan, Trolls, That Kid Who Cybered Your GF, Shane Warne, Fashion/Menswear look-books. The internet is so amazing. 

Tell us about how you go about hunting and gathering fodder for Brown Cardigan…

For the most part it finds us. But we have our toes at the shallow end of the world wide wave pool at all times, so not that much gets past us. The thing is with finding #content, it doesn’t have to be the newest meme, but the dankest, stale old timeless meme. That’s the key.

What can you tell us about your audience?

About three million idiots a month clicking a stupid website with just images on it. You tell us?

Do you think the internet has birthed a whole new generation and genre of comedy?

Yeah/nah, but yeah the internet is becoming a parody of itself. Memes shouldn’t really cross over into real life, no one should ever talk about them, yet here we are, talking about them.

Why do you think it’s important for blogs like yours to exist? 

Time is too good not to be wasted. And we all need to make money from the internet. Or at least aim to. Life goals and making our parents proud. We’d probably sellout in a second. Wouldn’t you?

People talk more and more about being scared that one day they will be “that girl” who fell into the toilet at a festival and became a worldwide GIF. Should they be scared?

Fuck yes. Absolutely. Worldwife.gif.

Which other websites do you like/read/admire/actually go on?

@brendan’s Instagram page, Clickhole.com, oh and lifting #content from lememe.com and staying clear of Reddit.

What do you love about putting something out into the world via the internet?

Putting something out with absolutely NO context, and then watching people make their own cool jokes with it. Powerful shit.

The “golden era” of independent publishing has seen an awful lot written about magazines; their enduring influence as well as the challenges facing the industry. Sometimes those discussions have overlooked the amazing things happening in online publishing so in November, we plan to rectify that. For the next few weeks we’ll be speaking to the people who have been beavering away at making the internet a very pleasant and addictive place to visit, finding out their secrets and asking them why they do what they do.