A Children’s Book Turned into a Viral Comedy

By: Jessie Sha

It started out as a joke to people half a century ago, but now it’s turning into an art for contagious dark laughter to spread. This was from the popular characters Mr. Men, and Little Miss which has met a new wave of virality this summer. All of this started because they were being co-opted for cheekily bleaker meme that was going around all platforms, brands, and politics. The official series has someone like, “Little Miss Jealous,” but the meme is more understood as, “Little Miss At My [Expletive] Breaking Point.” Some comedy observers and creators call it humor for our time.

A filmmaker named Giorgio Angelini had been tracking the meme Pepe the Frog, another hilarious meme across the internet, and found that it had a similar dynamic with the Little Miss meme. In 1971 British author and illustrator Roger Hargreaves launched his Mr. Men series where characters were given a “title” and had to live with it and see how it affected their lives.

According to the book series, one of their sons asked, “What does a tickle look like?” This resulted in the creation of Mr. Tickle. It is said on the site that it sold millions of copies within 3 years.

In these books, people get to see how they act with their title and how their personality affects their life. This caused many comics, BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), and songs to come out throughout the decade. Some people would even create new characters like Mr. Mad, or Ms. Sweet. During this time, an Instagram account by the name of “LittleMissNotesApp,” has been posting Adam Hargreaves’ characters from his series, making them into memes that people could enjoy. Adam started to add more characters after his father, Roger Hargreaves, died. This account has attracted 2 million people by posting these characters. This trend is fitting into our world today as it keeps growing bigger.