Fame in one quick hop

Jay the Rabbit has rosy cheeks and long eyelashes, but it’s his (or her) incessant wisecracks about urban life, TV series and politics – mostly in Thai but also in English – that have drawn 180,000 humans to his Facebook page in just a short time. 

And it has to help that the identity of the cartoonist who draws the narrow-eyed cony and puts the sarcastic words in his mouth remains a delicious secret.

The creator of Jaytherabbit, as the boisterous bunny is properly called on the social network, prefers to stay anonymous, relying on the username “The Rabbit”. But thousands of folks are hopping to the site to find a chatty community where people happily share jokes with a cartoon critter.

“I love the rabbit’s cute character,” The Rabbit says of his (or her) creation. “I’d uploaded lots of pictures of real rabbits in different poses to my Facebook wall and added text, but in recent years it was getting harder to find good pictures to match my stories. So I started doing my own illustrations, even though I have no art skill.”

Interest took off when Jaytherabbit made a crack about the government’s first-car policy, saying the subsidy money could have instead paid for three new Skytrain lines, a new international airport or a high-speed train network. The illustration went viral. 

“It rapidly became a controversy and I actually stopped doing the drawings for a couple months – I only ever wanted to do this for fun!” says The Rabbit. “My friends kept pushing me to create a page just for Jaytherabbit, but I didn’t want to do it at all. This was just something I did for leisure.” 

The friends won. Jay got his own page on April 21 and has since amassed 180,000 followers, both Thais and foreigners, with many of them turning out to be big-city female office workers ranging in age from 25 to 35. 

“I started out just sharing the old illustrations I’d done, most of which were influenced by daily news events and my own feelings,” says The Rabbit. His (or her) reward was showers of “likes” and “shares” – 10,000 for a single drawing is not uncommon.

Among the more biting gags, the rascally rabbit once compared Bangkok Governor MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra to one of the stars of television’s “Supharbburuth Chutathep”, saying that if Khunchai Phutthipat in the series is a dream, then Khunchai Sukhumbhand is the reality. 

In another spot, Jaytherabbit awarded a “No Bell” prize to the inventors of popular mobile-phone application Camera 360, calling it magic for being able to transform a “termite” (by which Jay meant an ugly person) into a human.

The first-car controversy obviously didn’t keep Jay quiet for long, but the artist is careful to avoid social conflict. “This is why I refuse to identify who I am in the real world. I want to leave everything up to my fans’ imagination. Actually I’m a freelance in public relations, but this page is like my avatar, voicing what I think but can’t say. It seems to be my dark side.”

The Rabbit is conscientious about replying to all comments and wall posts, saying it “keeps the page alive”.

“It’s not a page for office women – it’s an office in miniature. There’s a feminine feel to it, but a lot of men also follow Jaytherabbit because they want to know what women are talking about!” 

It’s starting to sound like The Rabbit is a woman, but the hints remain coy. “A lot of people imagine me as a chubby 35-year-old office worker who’s experienced and is brash, sassy and funny.” 

Jay has become “agony aunts” to many readers who post pleas for help or advice on their troubles. “I don’t know why they trust me so much when we’ve never met,” says The Rabbit. “One boy sent me a picture of him trying to commit suicide. I spent about 30 minutes trying to calm him down.” 

Another follower posted thanks for helping her mother, who was suffering from a paralysing disease, “but she could smile when she saw my illustrations. I cried when I read that. That’s what makes my work worthwhile.”

The Rabbit also teamed up with illustrators from several other Facebook pages to produce postcards that were sold to raise money for an animal hospital. “That was the brainchild of Gale, a 15-year-old whose family runs a project to help pitiful dogs in various animal hospitals. A dozen postcards in a pack cost Bt140. 

“It was successful and I was glad to be part of it. All of these cases show how much people care and how sincere they are.”

 

 

FAST FRIENDS

<< Jaytherabbit’s hutch is at www.Facebook.com/jaytherabbitofficial and also on Twitter and Instagram.

 

Other Facebook pages that have set speed records for drawing thousands of subscribers overnight:

<< Maeban Mee Nuad (“Maebanmeenuad”) features a husky man dressed in avant-garde costumes posing at spots around Bangkok and overseas. 

<< Nong Noey Rak Lok (“noeyzupermarketfanpage”) has the teenage girl sharing her love for the world and an unconventional sense of humour. 

<< Samakhom Mook Siew Siew (“samakhom”) has more than a million followers thanks to old-fashioned gags that women are unlikely to appreciate.

<< Lookha Phu Narak (“ilovemyclient”) is full of painfully satirical cartoons about the often-uncomfortable communications between graphic designers and their clients.