The original Reddit post happened in 2018, the 24th of March, on me_irl, a subreddit meant for posting “selfies of the soul,” things that represent you innately. After all this time, the post has collected almost 21 thousand upvotes and 200 comments. 

At first, people didn’t understand what it was, laughing at the poetic absurdity of the Tweet and hoping that it would take off, with people making more of them. Little did they know…

The statement that resonated with folks the most after seeing the original “Pelican” was: “Finally, a president who's not afraid to say what we're all thinking.” Others questioned reality and wondered how people come up with things like these, wondering that it could be a different form of Haiku. 

A mere day later, the community was formed on March 25th. Currently, there are 41 thousand people there, all getting Pelicanized memes in their feeds.

This may surprise you, but people have been making Pelicanized memes for far longer than you may be willing to believe. This is actually an art form called erasure or blackout poetry. 

Words are deleted, cut, or blotted out from any kind of previous text, be it a newspaper, a poetry book, or, in this case, a Tweet. It changes the original meaning but retains some authorship, drawing attention to new themes.

One of the earliest known adopters of this technique was Doris Cross, particularly known for her works with dictionaries. Using them, she could make astounding works of art by deleting parts of text and creating intricate drawings over them.

Blackout poetry may be used as a form of self-expression or a form of critique of political suppression and secrecy. Most importantly, like any great form of art, it is versatile and deeper than it may seem at first glance.

Now that we know a bit more about what the formal name for “Pelicanizing” is, we can take a look at other similar communities. Again on Reddit, SpeedOfLobsters has the same basic concept of using blackout poetry to create humorous images, but they no longer limit themselves to Tweets. There is also ExpandDong, a community that adds letters to things in a ransom note fashion, leading to humorous but explicit results.

Finally, an honorable mention should be made to Sbubby, a community for editing various logos in ways that look the same but say something different. I don’t think I can't put this linguistic game into words, so you’re best off just looking at it yourself.

Coming back to our current topic, Pelicanizing. If you were wondering, you can now create your own edit without Photoshop or MsPaint. By taking a quick visit to the Pelicanizer, created by Josiah Winslow, with a Twitter or Mastodon (Twitter alternative) link in hand, you can create your very own piece of art or comedy. Try it out, the website works well, and it’s at the same time easier and more difficult to create your own works than it may seem at first glance.

For this article, Bored Panda was lucky enough to get in contact with the creator of the Pelicanizer and an active voice in the Pelicanizing community, Josiah Winslow, a hobbyist programmer. Josiah works on lots of programming projects when he has the time, and you can see what he is working on on his Twitter or Mastodon accounts.

Asked about the meaning of the original Pelican, Josiah believes that “whoever made the original picture only ever meant it as a funny one-off meme.” It’s so far removed from the original context (the 2016 Republican National Committee) that it doesn’t seem that deep.

“But part of me thinks that's the point: it's such a silly thing, put in the mouth of someone who already says a bunch of silly things (well, that's my opinion, anyway).”

Josiah had already put out some posts on the OThePelican sub and had the idea of making the Pelicanizer. He thought that being able to remove the letters from Tweets on a website would be easier than drawing over them by hand. “The first version of the site was made only knowing what I knew then, and it was pretty barebones compared to how it is now.”

Josiah doesn’t have any real goal for the Pelicanizer. He created it to help himself and others create these niche memes easier. As long as that stays true - Josiah is happy.