About
Pixelated Boat or pixelatedboat is the Twitter alias of cartoonist Ben Ward, the writer and artist of the One Giant Hand webcomic. Online, Ward is for photoshopped versions of tweets and news articles, which see politicians, celebrities and other public persons appear absurd or foolish. Perhaps most famously, Ward is credited for coining the Milkshake Duck.
Online History
On January 28th, 2015, Ward joined Twitter under the name @PixelatedBoat.
On June 12th, 2016, @pixelatedboat coined the term “Milkshake Duck,” in reference to the internet’s breif love affair with a new public person only to discover something distasteful about their past. He tweeted,“The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! 5 seconds later We regret to inform you the duck is racist.” As of September 2017, the post (shown below) received more than 11,000 retweets and 26,000 likes.
Three days later, on June 15th, on Tumblr, Ward published the first entry of his One Giant Hand webcomic. The four-panel parody of the 1976 film Taxi Driver (shown below) garned more than 80 notes on Tumblr and 180 likes on Instagram.
The next month, on July 4th, he published an episode of One Giant Hand entitled “The one where Ross fails Tʜᴇ Hᴏʟᴇ,” a parody of the sitcom Friends. On Tumblr, as of September 2017, the post is his most popular, garnering more than 20,000 notes.
Reputation
On June 22nd, 2017, Oxford Dictionaries wrote an entry about Milkshake Duck in their “On the Radar” column, saying it was rising in ubiquity. They wrote,
“Over time, Milkshake Duck has become a term that can be used to refer to any person or thing that gains fleeting popularity for something seemingly pleasing, only for a deeper dig to reveal unfortunate truths about their past or opinions, typically a connection to or history of some form of bigotry.”
Five days later, June 27th, 2017, The New York Times wrote a story about Milkshake Duck, chronicling its rise in the public’s consciousness.
Search Interest
External References