Wolf Like Me: Anatomy of a T-Shirt Trend (Update)
Hey kids. Today, I want to trace a popular t-shirt trend from conception to parody.
Here is the original 3 Wolf Moon shirt, which for a time, was inexplicably the best selling garment on Amazon’s site. The tee went viral, thanks in large part to customer comments that ascribed it great powers of seduction.
Naturally, its unexpected, runaway success spawned a number of spoofs, most notably this design from Threadless, which incorporates yet one internet meme of note, the keyboard cat phenomenon.
And the pièce de résistance, the Three Teen Wolf Moon shirt, which riffs, quite predictably, on one of my beloved pop culture icons. (Karl Marx’s oft-quoted line about history repeating itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, seems particularly apropos here…)
UPDATE
A little Google sleuthing has revealed a fairly new homage to the 3 Wolf motif that incorporates (a) a mystical unicorn (is there any other kind?) and (b) E.T. on his bike juxtaposed against the silhouette of the moon. And on and on and on it goes…
UPDATE #2
Our friends over at Thunderfrogs are reporting that the original 3 Wolf Moon design is already poised for a comeback of sorts; it will make (or perhaps has already made?) a belated appearance on NBC’s wildly popular sit-com-cum-rom-com, The Office (screengrab attached below).
For my money, this is still the only (Teen) Wolf shirt worth wearing:
I’m sure there are other variants on the three wolf motif; readers, any suggestions?
The appropriate, lupus-themed soundtrack:
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October 1st, 2009 at 1:13 am
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December 14th, 2009 at 9:35 am
[...] the other biggest t-shirt meme of 2009 was undoubtedly the 3 Wolf Moon phenomenon. It’s runaway success spawned a number of spin-offs including, predictably enough, the 3 Teen [...]