Like any true academic weapon on a Monday night, I found myself doom-scrolling through a multitude of questionable dances and Biden x Trump ship edits, mostly accompanied by Chappell Roan’s “Hot to Go.” However, on this particular night, I stumbled across a corner of the internet that destroyed my childhood faster than the American Girl Doll: Care and Keeping of You picture book.
It all started with a thirst trap inspired by Gravity Falls (a 2016 Disney XD animated kids show), where the potentially deranged creator simps over the character “Bill Cipher” who, let me clarify, is a triangle. As seen through the Colleen Ballinger apology video, the seemingly never-ending years of Minecraft music parodies, or even Kim K’s Instagram page, the internet houses some of the world’s most terrifying ideas, but the Bill Cipher thirst trap managed to cross the line in a new, even more chaotic way.
Despite my horror, I couldn’t help but surrender to my intrigue; that’s when I discovered “judyhoppsl0vr69.” Currently also found under the usernames “Nik” and “BradleyUppercrusttIII,” the TikTok influencer has amassed a whopping 1.8 million followers as a result of his unhinged content surrounding his romantic fixation on Judy Hopps, a female rabbit from the 2016 Disney film Zootopia. Every video on the page illustrates this (most likely satirical) fixation: Judy Hopps posters covering more of his apartment walls than paint, a life-sized cardboard cutout of the anthropomorphized bunny sitting by his bed, and even an extensive collection of stitched videos asking Judy Hopps cosplayers to meet him for dinner. I was entranced by the chaos and success of the 26-year-old content creator; while I was stuck attempting to get my degree and bawling over NEUR0010, this perplexing man had already built himself a career on nothing more than the sexualization of a rabbit and a dream.
Inevitably, I did some more internet sleuthing, and, to my horror, I was met with thousands of similar (although not quite as well-renowned) accounts. I would rather take a bath in my high school’s lost and found bin than be subjected to the horror of a Spongebob Squarepants thirst trap again. Animated victims of these appalling CapCut edits included none other than the Ice Age tiger, Lord Farquaad (Shrek), and even a concerning fanbase for Zootopia’s own Nick Wilde. He is, in fact, a fox. Perpetual “hear me outs” flood the TikTok algorithm, and, as an unfortunate result of my research for this article, my FYP as well.
However, there’s a bit of a gray area as to who truly inspired this heinous trend, as animation companies themselves are far from innocent when it comes to character designs. Especially in animated movies, Disney uses clearly gendered imagery as a way of distinguishing gender among primarily animal casts, as seen in the constant bows (i.e. Minnie Mouse, Marie from Aristocats) and elongated eyelashes of their female characters. Many of them look fresh from a full-face Sephora consultation. Even before film had advanced enough to have color, animators still found ways to sexualize cartoon characters through the content of their stories. Throughout the 1930s, Max Fleischer’s Betty Boop served as the protagonist in a variety of allegedly “comedic” films detailing her being sexually harassed, objectified, and catcalled. In both the 1932 “Boop-Oop-A-Doop” and the 1934 “Betty’s Big Boss” episodes, Betty is harassed by her employers, with the first shot illustrating a carnival ringmaster inappropriately touching Betty and subsequently threatening to fire her if she didn’t allow him to continue. The sexualization and physical stereotypes seen in animation also extend to infamous characters such as Jessica Rabbit, Snow White, Jasmine (Aladdin), and Elastigirl (The Incredibles), who all similarly display impossibly small waists, skin-tight outfits, and other unrealistic beauty standards. Even just looking at a character like Tinkerbell, it’s practically impossible to ignore her nanometer-length waist and dramatic hourglass figure. So while the satirical simping over cartoon characters on TikTok is undoubtedly amusing, it’s also quite sad to think about the long history of animation companies perpetuating this objectification through their unrealistic designs of female bodies.
Yet in true internet fashion, there are also just some individuals like “judyhoppsl0vr69” who have no one to blame but their own tormented minds. As of the night before writing this, the infamous content creator directly asked fans to start a rumor that he was both on Ozempic and dating Jenna Ortega. While this new lore initially seems like the most chaotic update of the night, I was quickly introduced to something even more horrific, something even more chaotic than a divorce episode of The Kardashians: the terrifying world of Peppa Pig thirst traps. I’ve truly lost all faith in humanity at this point in the article, as I now find myself lying awake at night pondering what could have possibly possessed someone to create this. The video targets “Daddy Pig” (Peppa Pig’s father), who is a mere amalgamation of two poorly drawn circles and a beard so horrid it could’ve been mistaken for that of a fifteen-year-old boy who’s yet to invest in a razor.
Moving on from the heinous world of sexualized cartoon animals, I later discovered the utterly baffling world of the My Hero Academia fandom (hey, at least they’re humans this time). I first began watching the show on my own after a couple of my friends coerced me into starting it, and it seemed like a pretty tame series at the beginning—at least until I discovered its fanbase. TikTok is practically overflowing with ship edits of every possible character combination in the MHA universe, with some of them making me want to hurl my phone at a brick wall before ever opening Netflix again. The series has become a meme on the internet due to the absurdity of its fanbase, and in the same nature of judyhoppsl0vr69, some individuals have just become too creative with their content.
I’d like to create a list of acceptable and non-acceptable cartoon characters to simp over, as I believe myself to be an expert in the subject after my aforementioned extensive research. I’ll start with the more obvious, non-acceptable characters (all of which I’ve witnessed): Judy Hopps (Zootopia), Nick Wilde (Zootopia), Bill Cipher (Gravity Falls), Grunkle Stan (Gravity Falls), the dad, Marlin, from Finding Nemo, Ralph (Wreck it Ralph), Squidward Tentacles (Spongebob Squarepants), the horse from Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Lighting McQueen (Cars). Now, if you really believed I would provide a list of “acceptable” characters after all of this, then you’re utterly mistaken and honestly can’t take a joke, but I am quite interested as to who you thought I would say. Anyway, I’ll conclude with one last message to “judyhoppsl0vr69”: Congrats on your success; there’s no doubt that you’ve earned it after all the dignity you’ve sacrificed. I just pray your type expands from rabbits one of these days.
