Insanity Wolf is an advice-animal image macro: a photo of a snarling wolf with captions proposing absurdly extreme, often violent reactions to ordinary situations. Know Your Meme sums it up as “like the mentally disturbed cousin of Courage Wolf.” It belongs to the late-2000s family of advice animals that grew out of 4chan and image-macro generator sites.
Content note: the joke of the format is exaggerated violence, so many Insanity Wolf macros describe harm, crime or cruelty.
Origin
Know Your Meme lists the meme’s origin as 4chan and its year as 2009, and its entry was added on November 23, 2009 (Know Your Meme). The Courage Wolf entry records the timing in prose: “In 2009 a macro named Insanity Wolf began appearing,” offering insane and often murderous options instead of courage (Know Your Meme).
The photo predates the meme. According to Know Your Meme, “the wolf image from which this meme is derived has been appearing online since at least 2006,” including a 2006 YTMND page and a Flickr post dated October 21, 2007 (Know Your Meme).
How It’s Used
Like other advice animals, Insanity Wolf uses the standard image-macro layout, with text “centered at the top and bottom of the image, usually using all upper-case letters.” As Wikipedia explains, “the text at the top is only for introduction and the text at the bottom is the main message.” For Insanity Wolf, the top line names a minor situation and the bottom line escalates it to an insane response. Know Your Meme also catalogues spin-offs including Scene Wolf and Baby Insanity Wolf (Know Your Meme).
The Advice Animals Family Tree
| Meme | Appeared | Where | What it does | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advice Dog | September 4, 2006 | The Mushroom Kingdom forum | Smiling puppy on a colour wheel giving advice | KYM |
| Courage Wolf | Gained traction December 2008 | Picked up by 4chan’s /b/ | ”Derived from the original Advice Dog series”; extreme advice meant to help you achieve greatness | KYM |
| Insanity Wolf | 2009 | 4chan | Courage Wolf’s “insane cousin”: insane, often murderous options | KYM |
| Scene Wolf, Baby Insanity Wolf | Not dated | Not stated | Variants listed as sub-entries of Insanity Wolf | KYM |
Other advice animals with Hashpedia entries include #ScumbagSteve, #GoodGuyGreg, #BadLuckBrian, #Philosoraptor, #SociallyAwkwardPenguin and #OverlyAttachedGirlfriend. For the format in general, see #ImageMacroMemes, and for the site where it started, #4chanCulture.