This Is Fine Dog

This is fine.

On January 9, 2013, cartoonist K.C. Green published Gunshow comic #648. It depicted a dog sitting at a table, sipping coffee while flames consumed the room around him. "This is fine," the dog says, clearly in denial as he slowly melts. "I'm okay with the events that are unfolding currently."

It was about depression. It was about coping. It was about the particular kind of dissociation that comes when everything is objectively on fire but you lack the emotional resources to address it. The comic was titled "On Fire" or "The Pills Are Working," and it captured something deeply uncomfortable about the human condition.

The meme simmered for years before reaching peak relevance in 2016, when the Republican National Committee tweeted it during the Democratic National Convention. K.C. Green was not amused by the unauthorized political use of his work. But the genie was out of the bottle—This Is Fine had become the default reaction image for anyone living through historical events they were powerless to change.

Climate change? This is fine. Global pandemic? This is fine. Economic collapse, political chaos, existential dread about the future of humanity? This. Is. Fine.

The meme resonated because it was honest about dishonesty—about the lies we tell ourselves to get through the day, about the coping mechanisms that aren't really coping at all. We are all the dog. The room is always on fire. And we keep sipping our coffee.

K.C. Green later published a follow-up strip where the dog asks for help. But the internet preferred the original ending: acceptance, denial, and slow immolation.

This was fine. Until it wasn't.