The Wholesome Memes Twitter account is a proudly Canadian page that’s dedicated to sharing “memes, comics, wholesome stuff and anything [they] like”. Clearly, the page has had lots of success based on the amount of followers it has, but not everything comes down to how wide your audience is. Sometimes, what’s even more important is what a company chooses to do with their platform.

Outside of Twitter, Wholesome Memes has an online store that sells hoodies, t-shirts, tank tops, stickers and phone cases. But the best part? It’s all for a good cause. “The profits from our sales are split between the artist's selected charity, the artist and the cost of operating the store,” Wholesome Memes explains on their site. “The majority of profits go to the designated charities. Charities currently supported include Kids Help Phone, The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Meals on Wheels America and Wholesome Wave.”

As of the last time they updated their site, Wholesome Memes had already raised over $27,000 for charity. And if you purchase any of their products, you can rest assured that they are produced ethically. “All our clothing manufacturers declare their products have no involvement in sweatshops, child and forced labor,” they write on the site. “That is why our clothing lines focus on premium American Apparel and Bella Canvas brands. These brands are not the cheapest but ensure a fair wage at both the manufacturing and distribution level.”

Wholesome Memes also notes that they prefer to support charities for persons in distress, such as Kids Help Phone, whose trained crisis responders help teens in Canada and the US, and the National Suicide Prevention Line, who they have already donated nearly $5,000 to.

We all know that it’s wise to nourish our bodies with wholesome foods and ingredients, like plenty of fruits and vegetables, but it can also be a great idea to make sure that our minds and souls are properly fed too. There are so many tragedies happening in the world at all times, which we should certainly be aware of, but it’s healthy to take a break from all of our doom-scrolling and just enjoy some smiles for a while. We hope that these wholesome memes will brighten up your day just a bit and remind you that the world isn’t all bad. 

I’m sure you know that wholesome content has been on the rise in recent years. So to explore just how and why this has happened, Vox published an article analyzing what it really means to be “wholesome” today. They note that this buzzword once referred to sexual chastity, but in recent years, it has transformed and been reclaimed by progressive individuals looking to put a smile on other people’s faces.

Videos of unlikely animal friends, children telling their parents the sweetest things, and memes that seem like they might be dark at first glance but take a turn for the positive. Plenty of things can fall under the umbrella of “wholesome content” nowadays, but it wasn’t always this way. Vox writer Constance Grady explained that today, wholesome just means “friends supporting friends”. “It means valuing kindness. It means not judging simple pleasures,” she writes. 

“And while just a few short years ago, wholesomeness might have suggested a regressive nostalgia for the 1950s, today’s wholesomeness is determinedly progressive,” Constance explains. “If we’re going to have wholesome family values, the thinking seems to be, they’re damn well going to be diverse and multicultural wholesome family values.”

Constance goes on to explain that in the early to mid 2000s, the word “wholesome” would not have been seen as a compliment for many young people. It seemed synonymous with being boring or being a prude or old-fashioned, and not in a good way. She recalls how Katie Holmes was labeled wholesome by Rolling Stone in 1998, which essentially meant she was “the opposite of modern”.

Ouch. At this time, wholesome was still associated with chastity, purity and evangelical values. Thankfully, however, over time, people in the mainstream began pushing against these outdated views and sought to reclaim the word. Rather than having a connotation of religious values or being boring and innocent, wholesome began to become synonymous with progressive values like multiculturalism and openness.  

By 2014, the word wholesome had begun gaining traction as a more fashionable word, and that’s when BuzzFeed latched onto it. After BuzzFeed created their “wholesome” category, sharing sweet and uplifting stories and photos, helping to promote the idea that wholesome meant progressive, kind and cool. And since then, wholesome content has been spread rapidly online in response to toxic and hateful internet content. 

“I see the renewed use of this particular meaning as a reaction to the cynicism of our time,” Emily Brewster, associate editor and editorial ambassador for Merriam-Webster, told Vox. “To the cynicism of our political state and to how nasty the internet can be. There is an interest in the wholesome as it pertains not to the physical body but to the mind as it is impacted by bullies and trolls and all this brutal ugliness.” My mother always told me that I should respond to mean individuals by “killing them with kindness”. So in the same vein, we can all respond to cruelty online by flooding the internet with wholesome content!

Is your day feeling a bit sunnier? We hope you’re loving these wholesome memes as much as we did and that you’re feeling inspired to spread a bit more positivity into the world too. Keep upvoting the pics that made you chuckle or warmed your soul, and then if you’re looking for even more Bored Panda content that is 100% pure, certified wholesome, we recommend you check out this article next.