Meet the Goldsmiths grad with over 12,000 Instagram followers for cartoon frogs

So you’ve said something extremely 21st century to your friend on the tube but think nothing of it. The next morning you see a funny cartoon on Instagram and you realise it’s literally exactly what you’d said on the tube the day before.

The Awkward Frogs Instagram account turns your cringey millennial issues into cartoons of frogs and over 12,000 of you are loving it. Meet the Goldsmiths grad behind it, who’s staying anonymous because, admittedly, it’s a pretty funny hobby.

Where did the idea for this account come from?

I was a really weird child and I had a whole scrapbook full of these drawings of frogs. Then when I was 19 I was hearing the most ridiculous things all around me about likes on Facebook, likes on Instagram, and I just thought I could turn these frogs into whinging millennials.

12 thousand followers is really impressive! How do you feel about that?

It’s crazy, because it’s just some fun really. I love stereoptying people. At the end of the day they are stereotypes for a reason, they come from something. Like I met this gym lad the other day and I was like you’re ticking all the stereotype boxes.

It’s also opened me up to the art side of Instagram, there’s some amazing accounts. I’ve got this cute flirty thing with this one artist where we keep liking each other’s posts.

About 15-20 minutes so it’s not like I’m spending my life locked up drawing frogs…

I make notes on my phone, so if I ever hear someone on the tube or my friends saying something funny then I’ll write it down. Like today I heard two girls talking – one asked what the other was doing and she said ‘oh I’m just working out the colour coordination of my Instagram’…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BOAVXvWBAXd/?taken-by=theawkwardfrogs

So now you’ve got a purpose for listening in to conversations on the tube.

Yeah exactly. I’ve always been a big hater of the generation I’m in, I hate the ridiculous thoughts I have sometimes, the things that people wouldn’t necessarily worry about 20 years ago. Like our parents were waiting for someone to call them on their landline, and we’re checking what time someone was online on WhatsApp. But it annoys me that those things are deemed psychotic if a girl does that, but if the guys does that it’s just savvy… So this account is a place where I can vent.

What do your friends think?

I haven’t told many people because it’s a pretty weird thing to do!

I don’t tell boys because they always think it’s about them – like no, Jesus Christ, it’s about life.

Do you have any plans for turning this account into something bigger? You could go into illustration with this kind of thing.. 

Yeah maybe postcards. I mean the dream is a loo book like maybe The Awkward Frogs Guide to Love.

Like a guru!

Yeah except it’s the blind leading the blind. That’s the whole things with this account – I’m just as guilty of saying the kinds of things in my drawings.