We Rate Dogs

2015Social media account / catchphrase / rating formatactive

Also known as: @dog_rates · WeRateDogs · Dog Rates

We Rate Dogs is a Twitter account created by Matt Nelson in 2015 that rates user-submitted dog photos with scores exceeding 10, famous for the catchphrase "they're good dogs Brent" and absurdist DoggoLingo captions.

We Rate Dogs is a social media account created by Matt Nelson in November 2015 that rates user-submitted photos of dogs on a scale of one to ten, except the ratings almost always exceed ten. The account's signature move of giving dogs scores like "13/10" or "14/10" alongside absurdist captions turned it into one of Twitter's most beloved accounts, spawning the viral catchphrase "they're good dogs Brent" and helping popularize the DoggoLingo internet dialect. What started as a joke from an Applebee's in North Carolina grew into a multi-platform brand with millions of followers and a legitimate business generating six figures annually.

TL;DR

We Rate Dogs is a social media account created by Matt Nelson in November 2015 that rates user-submitted photos of dogs on a scale of one to ten, except the ratings almost always exceed ten.

Overview

We Rate Dogs operates on a simple but brilliant premise: people submit photos of their dogs, and the account rates them with a score out of ten. The catch is that every dog gets more than a perfect score because, well, they're all good dogs. Ratings typically land between 11/10 and 14/10, with the rare 15/10 reserved for truly heroic dogs6. Each rating comes paired with a fictional backstory or comedic caption that gives the dog a name and a personality. "This is Dewey. He's having a good walk. Arguably the best walk. 13/10 would snug softly" is a representative example14.

The account also rates non-dog animals sent in by followers, treating them "as if they were dogs" with deadpan captions like "We only rate dogs. Please don't send in Large Bashful Walri"8. This running gag of pretending confusion at receiving photos of other animals became a beloved recurring bit10.

On November 15, 2015, Matt Nelson, a 19-year-old golf management major at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, launched the @dog_rates Twitter account5. Nelson had been inspired by Weird Twitter and noticed that any joke involving dogs on his personal account (which had around 10,000 followers) performed way better than his other content6. He was sitting at an Applebee's with friends when he set up a Twitter poll asking if he should create a dog rating account. The response was positive, so he posted his first rating right there at the restaurant, featuring the dog of the friend he was having dinner with3. That first post pulled 534 retweets and over 2,500 likes4.

"I got addicted to trying to make people laugh in that constrained character space," Nelson later told CNBC. "Every time I would post a picture of my dog or any content that had to do with dogs, it would do much better than my other content. That signaled that the internet loves dogs just as much as I did"3.

By that night, Nelson was flooded with "hundreds" of messages from dog owners asking for their pups to be featured3. He promoted the account from his personal Twitter, and within a week, @dog_rates had surpassed his personal follower count3. Three weeks after launch, New York Magazine ran a feature calling it a "weird dog-rating Twitter account" that scored a "10/10"10.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter
Key People
Matt Nelson
Date
2015
Year
2015

On November 15, 2015, Matt Nelson, a 19-year-old golf management major at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, launched the @dog_rates Twitter account. Nelson had been inspired by Weird Twitter and noticed that any joke involving dogs on his personal account (which had around 10,000 followers) performed way better than his other content. He was sitting at an Applebee's with friends when he set up a Twitter poll asking if he should create a dog rating account. The response was positive, so he posted his first rating right there at the restaurant, featuring the dog of the friend he was having dinner with. That first post pulled 534 retweets and over 2,500 likes.

"I got addicted to trying to make people laugh in that constrained character space," Nelson later told CNBC. "Every time I would post a picture of my dog or any content that had to do with dogs, it would do much better than my other content. That signaled that the internet loves dogs just as much as I did".

By that night, Nelson was flooded with "hundreds" of messages from dog owners asking for their pups to be featured. He promoted the account from his personal Twitter, and within a week, @dog_rates had surpassed his personal follower count. Three weeks after launch, New York Magazine ran a feature calling it a "weird dog-rating Twitter account" that scored a "10/10".

How It Spread

The account exploded in its first months. HuffPost covered it in December 2015 when it had already hit 75,000 followers despite being less than a month old. Nelson's surreal captions, which New York Magazine compared to Weird Twitter's absurdist style, set the account apart from standard cute-animal aggregators. BuzzFeed compiled its favorite @dog_rates tweets in July 2016.

The account's biggest single meme moment came on September 12, 2016. Twitter user @brant questioned the rating system, telling Nelson it didn't make any sense. Nelson replied "they're good dogs Brent," deliberately misspelling Brant's name. A screenshot of the exchange posted by @Braydenominator racked up over 57,000 retweets. Mashable and Elite Daily both covered it the next day. The Washington Post called "They're good dogs, Brent" one of the best memes of 2016, noting that the exchange alone brought 50,000 new followers to the account.

The catchphrase took on a life of its own. Twitter users began applying "they're good dogs Brent" to other meme formats. Nelson sold T-shirts and coffee mugs with the phrase. Brant Walker, the real "Brent," took it all in stride, eventually putting "They're good dogs Brent" on his wedding cake. The two reconciled publicly in 2018, when Walker got his own puppy named Charlie and asked Nelson to rate it. Charlie received a 14/10.

By 2017, the account had crossed 1.5 million followers. Esquire profiled Nelson in a feature that framed him as a new breed of internet entrepreneur, noting that his online store was earning him "low five figures each month" from merchandise alone. Complex, Esquire, and other outlets covered the account's growth. J.K. Rowling endorsed the account by telling her followers to follow it, which Nelson called one of his career highlights.

How to Use This Meme

The We Rate Dogs format is straightforward. People typically submit a photo of their dog to the account, and it gets rated with a score exceeding 10/10 alongside a humorous caption. The standard template goes: "This is [Name]. [Comedic observation about the dog]. [Rating]/10 [optional reaction]." For example: "This is Chester. He will help you check out. Hopes you found everything you were looking for today. 13/10 I would, yes".

When people send in photos of animals that aren't dogs, the account plays along with feigned exasperation: "We only rate dogs. Please don't send in [absurd animal name]. Thank you... 12/10". The joke is that the non-dog always still gets a rating above 10.

The "they're good dogs Brent" catchphrase works as a standalone response to anyone being negative or overly critical about something wholesome. It's deployed whenever someone misses the point by being pedantic or cynical.

Cultural Impact

We Rate Dogs crossed from internet joke to mainstream media fixture faster than most social media accounts. Coverage in New York Magazine, Esquire, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Complex, and HuffPost treated it as a new model for internet comedy and entrepreneurship.

The account popularized DoggoLingo, the cutesy internet dialect full of words like "doggo," "pupper," "floofer," and "puppo," which spread beyond Twitter into everyday speech. A 2017 Esquire profile described Nelson as "the figurehead of a very 2017 breed of humor that seamlessly blends two distinct fixtures of the internet: relentlessly irreverent snark and genuine appreciation of adorable animals".

We Rate Dogs' fundraising work gave the account real-world impact beyond laughs. The $1.3 million raised in 2020 alone for over 170 dogs in need demonstrated the power of a trusted social media following when pointed at a cause.

Nelson's business model, built on merchandise, branded content, and genuine audience love rather than shock value or controversy, showed a viable path for creator-driven social media businesses. Brand partnerships with Disney, Netflix, and Budweiser proved the account's mainstream commercial appeal.

The account also inadvertently became a case study in DMCA abuse when it was twice suspended due to fake copyright claims, drawing Washington Post coverage of the broader vulnerability in Twitter's content moderation systems.

Full History

Nelson's path from college student tweeting dog jokes to running a legitimate media business is one of the more unusual entrepreneurship stories of the social media era. Born in October 1996 in northern Virginia, Nelson underwent open-heart surgery three days after birth to repair a congenital defect. His family later moved to West Virginia. He was intensely competitive from childhood, and that drive carried into his approach to Twitter, which he treated "as a game to be won".

By 2016, Nelson was already fielding offers to buy the @dog_rates handle, some for "tens of thousands of dollars". Instead of selling, he dropped out of college before his junior year and moved in with his parents in West Virginia to work on We Rate Dogs full-time. His father, an executive director at a law firm in Charleston, helped manage the business as it grew.

Nelson built out a small team: part-time animators, designers, photographers, and videographers handling the merch operation, plus full-time employees including a business manager to sort through the 800 to 1,000 daily submissions. The account generates six figures in annual revenue, split roughly 50-50 between merchandise and brand partnerships. We Rate Dogs has done branded content deals with Disney (creating "Lady and the Tramp"-themed posts), Netflix, and Budweiser.

The account's language played a significant role in popularizing DoggoLingo, the internet dialect that refers to dogs as "doggos" and "puppers". Esquire noted that Nelson had "helped popularize" this vocabulary, which spread from Twitter into physical-world usage. Nelson's rating tiers also developed their own lore: 11 through 13 were "really arbitrary," but 14/10 was a prestigious category reserved for dogs the community held "in high regard," typically heroic dogs. He even created a Twitter Moment collecting all the 14/10 ratings. The first 15/10 was given to a dog named Todd who saved his owner from a rattlesnake.

The account wasn't without controversy. In May 2017, after President Trump's "covfefe" tweet, Nelson joked about it by rating a dog "named Dewey (pronounced 'covfefe')" and then created a "Covfefe AF" hat to sell on his website. He announced he'd donate half the proceeds to Planned Parenthood. This angered followers who supported the account but not the organization. Nelson apologized, which then angered left-leaning followers who saw it as caving to the right. He ultimately did donate to Planned Parenthood. The Daily Dot covered the ordeal, noting the absurdity of a 20-year-old who posts dog pictures becoming a political lightning rod.

A second controversy hit in June 2018 when Twitter user @marybwagner revealed that a dog named Kanan, which is of Arabic origin, had been renamed "George" in its We Rate Dogs post. Wagner accused Nelson of "white-washing" the name to improve engagement. Nelson defended himself by saying "the name plays a massive role in how well the post does" and that he "always checks with the owner," pointing out he'd also changed a dog named "Pablo" to "Pipsy" in a popular post. After significant backlash, he declared he would no longer change any dog names. The incident was covered by Slate and the Daily Dot.

Beyond entertainment, We Rate Dogs became a genuine force for animal welfare. Nelson began sharing GoFundMe campaigns for dogs in need every Friday. In 2020 alone, the account helped raise $1.3 million through over 170 fundraisers. One case involved Paulina Tomlinson, who owed nearly $20,000 in medical bills after her rescue Pitbull Chico was hit by a car. After Nelson posted the campaign, it raised $18,840 in just 30 minutes.

Nelson expanded across platforms: an Instagram account with nearly 2 million followers, a Facebook page with over half a million, and a TikTok account. He launched a second Twitter account called Thoughts of Dog, parodying "dog feelings," which attracted 3.5 million followers and spawned its own book published in October 2020. The original We Rate Dogs account also produced a book in fall 2017, titled *#WeRateDogs: The Most Hilarious and Adorable Pups You've Ever Seen*. A card game followed in 2019, released by Chronicle Books for $25, letting players rate dogs on characteristics like "floof," "boopability," and "zoom".

The account brought unexpected media attention to copyright abuse on Twitter when it was suspended twice due to fraudulent DMCA complaints filed by competitors and unknown accounts. The Washington Post reported that the incidents "raised some serious questions about whether it's simply too easy for pranksters to successfully remove content from the Internet by abusing the copyright claim process".

As of December 2020, the Twitter account had nearly 9 million followers. By 2021, the combined social media following across platforms was close to 12 million. Nelson, who adopted a 10-year-old German Shepherd named Doug, kept the account running with a small but dedicated team. His most viral single post was a dog marching in the 2017 Women's March with a sign reading "I march for my mom," which was retweeted more than 50,000 times and favorited 134,000 times.

Fun Facts

Nelson's name for the account, "We Rate Dogs," uses "we" because "I Rate Dogs" would look like "iRateDogs," which sounds like "irate dogs" (angry dogs).

Brant Walker, the real "Brent," put "They're good dogs Brent" on his wedding cake.

Nelson's most popular single post, a dog at the 2017 Women's March, cost him 1,000 unfollows (his worst day for unfollows by far) but gained him 37,000 new followers.

The highest rating ever given on the account was 1776/10, awarded to a dog named Atticus who was described as "quite simply America af".

Nelson was DMing Cole Sprouse for a year and a half trying to get him to submit his dog, with no response.

A data science analysis found that golden retrievers are the most frequently featured breed on the account.

Derivatives & Variations

"They're good dogs, Brent" meme

The September 2016 exchange became a standalone catchphrase and reaction meme, applied to other meme formats including the Carl meme. The screenshot was shared over 57,000 times[4].

Thoughts of Dog (@dog_feelings)

Nelson's spinoff account parodying "dog feelings," reaching 3.5 million followers and spawning a published book in October 2020[3].

We Rate Dogs: The Card Game

Released by Chronicle Books in 2019 for $25, a card game where players rate dogs on characteristics like floof, boopability, wag, sass, zoom, ears, and overall goodness[9].

#WeRateDogs book

Published in fall 2017, combining greatest hits from the account with original material[5].

DoggoLingo vocabulary

While not created solely by the account, We Rate Dogs was instrumental in spreading terms like "doggo," "pupper," "floofer," and "puppo" into mainstream internet slang[5].

Non-dog ratings

The recurring bit of "rating" clearly non-canine animals (hedgehogs, bears, walruses) with absurd species names like "East African Chalupa Seal" or "Iraqi Speed Kangaroo" became its own beloved sub-format[8].

Frequently Asked Questions

We Rate Dogs

2015Social media account / catchphrase / rating formatactive

Also known as: @dog_rates · WeRateDogs · Dog Rates

We Rate Dogs is a Twitter account created by Matt Nelson in 2015 that rates user-submitted dog photos with scores exceeding 10, famous for the catchphrase "they're good dogs Brent" and absurdist DoggoLingo captions.

We Rate Dogs is a social media account created by Matt Nelson in November 2015 that rates user-submitted photos of dogs on a scale of one to ten, except the ratings almost always exceed ten. The account's signature move of giving dogs scores like "13/10" or "14/10" alongside absurdist captions turned it into one of Twitter's most beloved accounts, spawning the viral catchphrase "they're good dogs Brent" and helping popularize the DoggoLingo internet dialect. What started as a joke from an Applebee's in North Carolina grew into a multi-platform brand with millions of followers and a legitimate business generating six figures annually.

TL;DR

We Rate Dogs is a social media account created by Matt Nelson in November 2015 that rates user-submitted photos of dogs on a scale of one to ten, except the ratings almost always exceed ten.

Overview

We Rate Dogs operates on a simple but brilliant premise: people submit photos of their dogs, and the account rates them with a score out of ten. The catch is that every dog gets more than a perfect score because, well, they're all good dogs. Ratings typically land between 11/10 and 14/10, with the rare 15/10 reserved for truly heroic dogs. Each rating comes paired with a fictional backstory or comedic caption that gives the dog a name and a personality. "This is Dewey. He's having a good walk. Arguably the best walk. 13/10 would snug softly" is a representative example.

The account also rates non-dog animals sent in by followers, treating them "as if they were dogs" with deadpan captions like "We only rate dogs. Please don't send in Large Bashful Walri". This running gag of pretending confusion at receiving photos of other animals became a beloved recurring bit.

On November 15, 2015, Matt Nelson, a 19-year-old golf management major at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, launched the @dog_rates Twitter account. Nelson had been inspired by Weird Twitter and noticed that any joke involving dogs on his personal account (which had around 10,000 followers) performed way better than his other content. He was sitting at an Applebee's with friends when he set up a Twitter poll asking if he should create a dog rating account. The response was positive, so he posted his first rating right there at the restaurant, featuring the dog of the friend he was having dinner with. That first post pulled 534 retweets and over 2,500 likes.

"I got addicted to trying to make people laugh in that constrained character space," Nelson later told CNBC. "Every time I would post a picture of my dog or any content that had to do with dogs, it would do much better than my other content. That signaled that the internet loves dogs just as much as I did".

By that night, Nelson was flooded with "hundreds" of messages from dog owners asking for their pups to be featured. He promoted the account from his personal Twitter, and within a week, @dog_rates had surpassed his personal follower count. Three weeks after launch, New York Magazine ran a feature calling it a "weird dog-rating Twitter account" that scored a "10/10".

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter
Key People
Matt Nelson
Date
2015
Year
2015

On November 15, 2015, Matt Nelson, a 19-year-old golf management major at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, launched the @dog_rates Twitter account. Nelson had been inspired by Weird Twitter and noticed that any joke involving dogs on his personal account (which had around 10,000 followers) performed way better than his other content. He was sitting at an Applebee's with friends when he set up a Twitter poll asking if he should create a dog rating account. The response was positive, so he posted his first rating right there at the restaurant, featuring the dog of the friend he was having dinner with. That first post pulled 534 retweets and over 2,500 likes.

"I got addicted to trying to make people laugh in that constrained character space," Nelson later told CNBC. "Every time I would post a picture of my dog or any content that had to do with dogs, it would do much better than my other content. That signaled that the internet loves dogs just as much as I did".

By that night, Nelson was flooded with "hundreds" of messages from dog owners asking for their pups to be featured. He promoted the account from his personal Twitter, and within a week, @dog_rates had surpassed his personal follower count. Three weeks after launch, New York Magazine ran a feature calling it a "weird dog-rating Twitter account" that scored a "10/10".

How It Spread

The account exploded in its first months. HuffPost covered it in December 2015 when it had already hit 75,000 followers despite being less than a month old. Nelson's surreal captions, which New York Magazine compared to Weird Twitter's absurdist style, set the account apart from standard cute-animal aggregators. BuzzFeed compiled its favorite @dog_rates tweets in July 2016.

The account's biggest single meme moment came on September 12, 2016. Twitter user @brant questioned the rating system, telling Nelson it didn't make any sense. Nelson replied "they're good dogs Brent," deliberately misspelling Brant's name. A screenshot of the exchange posted by @Braydenominator racked up over 57,000 retweets. Mashable and Elite Daily both covered it the next day. The Washington Post called "They're good dogs, Brent" one of the best memes of 2016, noting that the exchange alone brought 50,000 new followers to the account.

The catchphrase took on a life of its own. Twitter users began applying "they're good dogs Brent" to other meme formats. Nelson sold T-shirts and coffee mugs with the phrase. Brant Walker, the real "Brent," took it all in stride, eventually putting "They're good dogs Brent" on his wedding cake. The two reconciled publicly in 2018, when Walker got his own puppy named Charlie and asked Nelson to rate it. Charlie received a 14/10.

By 2017, the account had crossed 1.5 million followers. Esquire profiled Nelson in a feature that framed him as a new breed of internet entrepreneur, noting that his online store was earning him "low five figures each month" from merchandise alone. Complex, Esquire, and other outlets covered the account's growth. J.K. Rowling endorsed the account by telling her followers to follow it, which Nelson called one of his career highlights.

How to Use This Meme

The We Rate Dogs format is straightforward. People typically submit a photo of their dog to the account, and it gets rated with a score exceeding 10/10 alongside a humorous caption. The standard template goes: "This is [Name]. [Comedic observation about the dog]. [Rating]/10 [optional reaction]." For example: "This is Chester. He will help you check out. Hopes you found everything you were looking for today. 13/10 I would, yes".

When people send in photos of animals that aren't dogs, the account plays along with feigned exasperation: "We only rate dogs. Please don't send in [absurd animal name]. Thank you... 12/10". The joke is that the non-dog always still gets a rating above 10.

The "they're good dogs Brent" catchphrase works as a standalone response to anyone being negative or overly critical about something wholesome. It's deployed whenever someone misses the point by being pedantic or cynical.

Cultural Impact

We Rate Dogs crossed from internet joke to mainstream media fixture faster than most social media accounts. Coverage in New York Magazine, Esquire, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Complex, and HuffPost treated it as a new model for internet comedy and entrepreneurship.

The account popularized DoggoLingo, the cutesy internet dialect full of words like "doggo," "pupper," "floofer," and "puppo," which spread beyond Twitter into everyday speech. A 2017 Esquire profile described Nelson as "the figurehead of a very 2017 breed of humor that seamlessly blends two distinct fixtures of the internet: relentlessly irreverent snark and genuine appreciation of adorable animals".

We Rate Dogs' fundraising work gave the account real-world impact beyond laughs. The $1.3 million raised in 2020 alone for over 170 dogs in need demonstrated the power of a trusted social media following when pointed at a cause.

Nelson's business model, built on merchandise, branded content, and genuine audience love rather than shock value or controversy, showed a viable path for creator-driven social media businesses. Brand partnerships with Disney, Netflix, and Budweiser proved the account's mainstream commercial appeal.

The account also inadvertently became a case study in DMCA abuse when it was twice suspended due to fake copyright claims, drawing Washington Post coverage of the broader vulnerability in Twitter's content moderation systems.

Full History

Nelson's path from college student tweeting dog jokes to running a legitimate media business is one of the more unusual entrepreneurship stories of the social media era. Born in October 1996 in northern Virginia, Nelson underwent open-heart surgery three days after birth to repair a congenital defect. His family later moved to West Virginia. He was intensely competitive from childhood, and that drive carried into his approach to Twitter, which he treated "as a game to be won".

By 2016, Nelson was already fielding offers to buy the @dog_rates handle, some for "tens of thousands of dollars". Instead of selling, he dropped out of college before his junior year and moved in with his parents in West Virginia to work on We Rate Dogs full-time. His father, an executive director at a law firm in Charleston, helped manage the business as it grew.

Nelson built out a small team: part-time animators, designers, photographers, and videographers handling the merch operation, plus full-time employees including a business manager to sort through the 800 to 1,000 daily submissions. The account generates six figures in annual revenue, split roughly 50-50 between merchandise and brand partnerships. We Rate Dogs has done branded content deals with Disney (creating "Lady and the Tramp"-themed posts), Netflix, and Budweiser.

The account's language played a significant role in popularizing DoggoLingo, the internet dialect that refers to dogs as "doggos" and "puppers". Esquire noted that Nelson had "helped popularize" this vocabulary, which spread from Twitter into physical-world usage. Nelson's rating tiers also developed their own lore: 11 through 13 were "really arbitrary," but 14/10 was a prestigious category reserved for dogs the community held "in high regard," typically heroic dogs. He even created a Twitter Moment collecting all the 14/10 ratings. The first 15/10 was given to a dog named Todd who saved his owner from a rattlesnake.

The account wasn't without controversy. In May 2017, after President Trump's "covfefe" tweet, Nelson joked about it by rating a dog "named Dewey (pronounced 'covfefe')" and then created a "Covfefe AF" hat to sell on his website. He announced he'd donate half the proceeds to Planned Parenthood. This angered followers who supported the account but not the organization. Nelson apologized, which then angered left-leaning followers who saw it as caving to the right. He ultimately did donate to Planned Parenthood. The Daily Dot covered the ordeal, noting the absurdity of a 20-year-old who posts dog pictures becoming a political lightning rod.

A second controversy hit in June 2018 when Twitter user @marybwagner revealed that a dog named Kanan, which is of Arabic origin, had been renamed "George" in its We Rate Dogs post. Wagner accused Nelson of "white-washing" the name to improve engagement. Nelson defended himself by saying "the name plays a massive role in how well the post does" and that he "always checks with the owner," pointing out he'd also changed a dog named "Pablo" to "Pipsy" in a popular post. After significant backlash, he declared he would no longer change any dog names. The incident was covered by Slate and the Daily Dot.

Beyond entertainment, We Rate Dogs became a genuine force for animal welfare. Nelson began sharing GoFundMe campaigns for dogs in need every Friday. In 2020 alone, the account helped raise $1.3 million through over 170 fundraisers. One case involved Paulina Tomlinson, who owed nearly $20,000 in medical bills after her rescue Pitbull Chico was hit by a car. After Nelson posted the campaign, it raised $18,840 in just 30 minutes.

Nelson expanded across platforms: an Instagram account with nearly 2 million followers, a Facebook page with over half a million, and a TikTok account. He launched a second Twitter account called Thoughts of Dog, parodying "dog feelings," which attracted 3.5 million followers and spawned its own book published in October 2020. The original We Rate Dogs account also produced a book in fall 2017, titled *#WeRateDogs: The Most Hilarious and Adorable Pups You've Ever Seen*. A card game followed in 2019, released by Chronicle Books for $25, letting players rate dogs on characteristics like "floof," "boopability," and "zoom".

The account brought unexpected media attention to copyright abuse on Twitter when it was suspended twice due to fraudulent DMCA complaints filed by competitors and unknown accounts. The Washington Post reported that the incidents "raised some serious questions about whether it's simply too easy for pranksters to successfully remove content from the Internet by abusing the copyright claim process".

As of December 2020, the Twitter account had nearly 9 million followers. By 2021, the combined social media following across platforms was close to 12 million. Nelson, who adopted a 10-year-old German Shepherd named Doug, kept the account running with a small but dedicated team. His most viral single post was a dog marching in the 2017 Women's March with a sign reading "I march for my mom," which was retweeted more than 50,000 times and favorited 134,000 times.

Fun Facts

Nelson's name for the account, "We Rate Dogs," uses "we" because "I Rate Dogs" would look like "iRateDogs," which sounds like "irate dogs" (angry dogs).

Brant Walker, the real "Brent," put "They're good dogs Brent" on his wedding cake.

Nelson's most popular single post, a dog at the 2017 Women's March, cost him 1,000 unfollows (his worst day for unfollows by far) but gained him 37,000 new followers.

The highest rating ever given on the account was 1776/10, awarded to a dog named Atticus who was described as "quite simply America af".

Nelson was DMing Cole Sprouse for a year and a half trying to get him to submit his dog, with no response.

A data science analysis found that golden retrievers are the most frequently featured breed on the account.

Derivatives & Variations

"They're good dogs, Brent" meme

The September 2016 exchange became a standalone catchphrase and reaction meme, applied to other meme formats including the Carl meme. The screenshot was shared over 57,000 times[4].

Thoughts of Dog (@dog_feelings)

Nelson's spinoff account parodying "dog feelings," reaching 3.5 million followers and spawning a published book in October 2020[3].

We Rate Dogs: The Card Game

Released by Chronicle Books in 2019 for $25, a card game where players rate dogs on characteristics like floof, boopability, wag, sass, zoom, ears, and overall goodness[9].

#WeRateDogs book

Published in fall 2017, combining greatest hits from the account with original material[5].

DoggoLingo vocabulary

While not created solely by the account, We Rate Dogs was instrumental in spreading terms like "doggo," "pupper," "floofer," and "puppo" into mainstream internet slang[5].

Non-dog ratings

The recurring bit of "rating" clearly non-canine animals (hedgehogs, bears, walruses) with absurd species names like "East African Chalupa Seal" or "Iraqi Speed Kangaroo" became its own beloved sub-format[8].

Frequently Asked Questions