It’s a sad fact of life that, after you’ve seen your four hundredth “Hang In There, Baby!” kitten-in-tree poster, the words seem to lose all meaning. From there, it’s a short journey to all of the various inspirational posters’ hopeful messages failing to spark anything inside you. “Believe”? Doubtful. “Teamwork”? Fat chance. “Achievement”? Not happening today, buddy. You start to lose faith that you were ever inspired to begin with. Every waking moment becomes just another day in the unmotivated, senseless parade of life—the parade where the candy is dyspepsia.
But then, out of the hazy fog of milquetoast reality, there appears a new poster. A better poster. A poster that seems to say, “Hey, no, I get it, friend. Happiness is a strange notion.” No, wait: it actually says that.
And thus your life is given renewed purpose, thanks to the creation of Werner Herzog Inspirationals, a Tumblr devoted entirely to pairing images you’d normally find on traditional inspirational posters with the wit and wisdom of one of cinema’s greatest misanthropes. It’s exactly the kind of project the Internet was made for, and it seems unbelievable that it’s taken this long for it to appear. Then again, in the inspirational words of Herzog himself, “Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.”