Lo-Fidelity

All Hail the Raptor Jesus

July 25, 2008 · Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, I asked my daughter to draw me a picture of a cartoon dinosaur. This is the same daughter that drew the picture of the sad, little robot for me as shown in a previous post. She asked me what kind, and I said a brontosaurus or a stegosaurus would be nice. Unfortunately, she got her first job soon after I asked her, plus she’s a procrastinator by nature, so she never got around to making the drawing.

The other day she apologized to me for not doing it. I said, “Oh, that’s okay. I know you’re busy. But look at this thing I found while travelling the web.”

velocirapture jesus

velocirapture jesus

Now I happen to think this is a very well done drawing. I’ve linked it to the owner’s Cafepress shop. But when I showed it to my daughter she said “Oh, that reminds me of the Raptor Jesus.”

“”The what?” I said.

Apparently, she’s known about the Raptor Jesus for at least two years, but she never told me about it. I typed Raptor Jesus into google and the first hit was on the Encyclopedia Dramatica. This is some seriously funny stuff. To truly qualify as a Raptor Jesus, it has to be badly photoshopped. So the drawing above is much too polished, although it still makes a nice t-shirt. Here’s a picture of the true Raptor Jesus.

True Raptor Jesus

True Raptor Jesus

There’s even a prayer that goes along with this. , based on the Lord’s Prayer. It’s filled with inside jokes that I don’t understand, but I love the first three lines.

Our raptor,

Who art in /h/eaven,

shopped be thy face.

So Raptor Jesus is part of a meme spread by a website called 4chan. And 4chan was started by a 15-year-old five years ago. I haven’t been able to get into the 4chan website as it is currrently down, but I did find this article in The Guardian which talks about the founder and some of the pranks he’s played.

Just when you think you’ve lost faith in the younger generation, something like this comes along and restores it all.

Categories: art
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