Raccoons are pretty awesome. They are so-called generalists, meaning that they can eat pretty much anything that they find. This makes them extremely flexible in terms of the environments in which they can survive.

On top of that, they boast a great sense of smell, decent vision, and the ability to ‘see’ using their hands. That way, they can get up to all sorts of mischief at night when people and other animals are busy getting some well-deserved shut-eye.

One of the raccoons’ best features is just how dextrous their hands are. They afford them a lot of flexibility when it comes to getting into various places, from houses and cars to attics and garages.

Unlike many other species of animal, raccoons can easily grasp objects, open screen doors and trash cans, grab fish from ponds, climb in through open windows, climb fences and drainpipes.

Since joining Instagram nearly 3 years ago in November 2021, ‘Adorable Raccoon Memes’ has been steadily spreading joy, confusion, good vibes, and chaos. All in lovable raccoon form, of course. At the time of writing, 273k people follow the popular account for the freshest, funniest, and most wholesome memes.

Naturally, all of the memes that get shared by the curator of the account feature raccoons. There’s a very clear sense of visual unity in these posts. Many of the memes are extremely colorful, feature very unusual fonts, and have bizarre images of raccoons in weird poses and making funny faces.

Because of how chaotic, bright, and sometimes even random these memes are, they stand out from the crowd in Instagram’s feed. Especially when they show up alongside those refined, overly polished, and aesthetic photos from influencers’ trips, dinners, and parties.

When you create content that contrasts what’s already popular, you can’t help but grab people’s attention.

Raccoon memes work so well because they go against the grain. They do the opposite of what content creators might generally advise others to do. A more traditional approach to meme-making is to focus on visual clarity.

When your audience is bombarded with so much information every day, you want to make it easier for them to get what’s happening in your meme.

For example, generally speaking, you ought to have a font that’s very clear and easy to read. If you don’t, you risk your target audience skipping your content entirely because it’s too difficult to engage with and requires too much effort to understand. The images you use as templates should be high quality.

(That being said, it bodes repeating that if everyone’s making pristine-looking content, your memes can end up getting lost in the crowd because of a similar aesthetic.)

Meanwhile, the captions ought to be to the point. Brevity is the soul of wit, after all! If you plaster a wall of text on top of a pic of a raccoon doing silly things, you won’t have too many fans. (Unless you’re being ironic and all ‘meta,’ but that’s another situation entirely.)

What raccoon memes have going for them is that all of the descriptions are incredibly short and instantly connect with the reader. And any truly relatable meme is a meme that’ll go viral. You don’t necessarily need raccoons and humor for that, but they certainly don’t hurt to have in your corner!

‘Adorable Raccoon Memes’ isn’t the only social media account dedicated to these lovable trash bandits. There are lots of content creators out there who want to give them the respect and attention they deserve. Some of them are enthusiastic to the point of putting themselves in the animal’s shoes—usually in jest.

For example, the founder of the ‘Raccooncore’ page on Facebook previously had this to say to Bored Panda: “I spend a lot of time eating out of the dumpster, doing small petty thefts at my local Tesco, and generally looking like I haven't slept a lot despite sleeping 12-14 hours a day in my computer chair. They are my spirit animals and I wished to share them with the rest of the globe.”

According to the founder of the ‘Raccooncore’ project, many people relate to raccoons, which is why they love them. “They’re like a cross between a dog and a monkey with added mischief. They do crime, they stay up late and they like to wash things in their tiny hands,” they said.