# How It Ought To Be

On August 28, 2017, conservative blogger Matt Walsh tweeted a Hurricane Harvey rescue photo captioned "This is how it ought to be, despite what your gender studies professor says," and Twitter users spent the next 48 hours attaching the same sentence to absurd pairings of animals and cartoon characters. By August 29, parody posts featuring a muscular Garfield cradling Jon Arbuckle and a cat sitting on top of a dog were trending across the site under the How It Ought To Be label.

## Origin
On August 28, 2017, Twitter user @MattWalshBlog posted an Associated Press photo of SWAT officer Daryl Hudeck carrying Catherine Pham and her 13-month-old son Aiden through floodwaters in Houston, taken by photographer David J. Phillip during the Hurricane Harvey rescue effort[2]. Walsh added the caption "Woman cradles and protects child. Man carries and protects both. This is how it ought to be, despite what your gender studies professor says." His tweet collected more than 7,600 retweets and 20,000 likes within two days[3].

Walsh is a Christian conservative blogger who has described himself as an extremist, "if truth is extreme"[2]. The How It Ought To Be meme format proper emerged the next day, August 29, 2017, when Twitter user @PraxisKenzie posted an illustration of a muscular Garfield cradling Jon Arbuckle with Walsh's caption copied word for word[3].

- **Platform:** Twitter
- **Creator:** @PraxisKenzie (earliest parody); Matt Walsh authored the source tweet
- **Date:** 2017

## Overview
How It Ought To Be works by pairing any two subjects, usually one holding or stacked on another, with a verbatim or lightly altered version of Walsh's original sentence[1]. Participants ran the template on a muscled Garfield lifting Jon Arbuckle, a cat sitting atop a dog, a pregnant SpongeBob SquarePants, Furbys, mutant sharks and Sonic the Hedgehog within the first 48 hours[2].

The comedic engine was refusal: instead of debating Walsh's gender-essentialist claim, posters applied his sentence as a universal caption for any pairing imaginable[2]. Writers at Mic described the response as "irreverent, artistic and scathing," arguing the How It Ought To Be reply deflated a conservative talking point without engaging it on its own terms[2]. Participants carried the "despite what your gender studies professor says" tagline into each caption so the parody chain stayed legible at a glance[1].

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is How It Ought To Be?
It is a 2017 Twitter image macro format that pairs an unlikely subject carrying or holding another with a verbatim copy of Matt Walsh's caption "This is how it ought to be, despite what your gender studies professor says"[2].

### Where did How It Ought To Be come from?
The source is an August 28, 2017 tweet by conservative blogger Matt Walsh, who captioned an AP Hurricane Harvey rescue photo with a line endorsing traditional gender roles[2]. The parody format itself began the next day with @PraxisKenzie's Garfield illustration[3].

### What does How It Ought To Be mean?
In Walsh's original tweet it meant that men and women occupy fixed protector and nurturer roles, which Mic described as a "June Cleaver-esque" and anti-gender-studies view[2]. In the meme responses, the phrase was stripped of that argument and used ironically on absurd pairings[1].

### How do you use How It Ought To Be?
Common convention is to post an image showing one thing holding or stacked on another, often a cartoon character or animal, and attach Walsh's full caption without altering it, as @GMPaiella did with a cat perched on a dog[3].

### Is How It Ought To Be still popular?
No, it was a short-lived 2017 Twitter format tied to Hurricane Harvey news coverage; most of its traffic came in the week of August 28, 2017[2]. It is remembered as a classic example of the "refuse to debate, caption absurdly" response style[2].

## References
1. [https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/woman-cradles-and-protects-child-meme/](<https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/woman-cradles-and-protects-child-meme/>)
2. [https://mic.com/articles/184118/this-is-how-it-ought-to-be-despite-what-your-gender-studies-professor-says-meme](<https://mic.com/articles/184118/this-is-how-it-ought-to-be-despite-what-your-gender-studies-professor-says-meme>)
3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-it-ought-to-be](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-it-ought-to-be>)

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Source: https://meme.com/memes/how-it-ought-to-be
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