MISC | Brushie Brushie Brushie

Meme
Year 2010
Origin 4chan

BRUSHIE Bat mammal photo caption

About
Brushie Brushie Brushie is a photoshop meme in which a hand with a toothbrush is superimposed on images, giving the illusion that the subject depicted in the photo is being brushed.

Origin
The original photo of the gray bat being brushed with a toothbrush was shared on Facebook[1] in an album titled "Baby Bats" by Australian Mandi Griffith on January 28th, 2008. The photo was reshared in the public group Bats!!![3] shortly after with the caption "Rubberlegs enjoying a brush with his blue toothbrush." However, since Griffith has made the album private, the photo is no longer accessible.
Spread
In 2009, the bat photo appeared on personal blogs I Have Seen The Whole Internet[4] and Motor Coconut[5] and in an article on political blog Daily Kos.[6] According to an email tip, the photo was first captioned with "Brushie Brushie Brushie" when it was shared on the imageboard 4chan sometime in January of 2010. However, the thread remains unarchived. By January 6th, the captioned version of the bat photo was shared on the Bungie.net forums[7] and FunnyJunk.[8] The earliest archived 4chan thread featuring photoshopped variations of the image was originally posted on January 10th, 2010.[9]

The same day, three threads with the photo were posted on the Adult Swim Forums.[10][11][12] Also on January 10th, the first YTMND[13] site with the bat photo was created, followed by the creation of a second YTMND[14] site two days later. On March 1st, 2010, a Facebook fan page[15] was launched, but only received 249 likes as of August 2012.

New instances continue to be shared on Tumblr with the tags "brushie brushie brushie"[16] and "brushie."[17] The images are often paired with a fan-named character from the television series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic known as Colgate, given the name for her toothpaste-colored mane and tail.