The Thiccctionary

You'll start noticing them once you know what to look for. That's the warning the editorial board gives every new submitter. Subscribe to a satirical dictionary about thiccc objects and within a week you'll be unable to walk past a parked cement truck without a small private nod.

This is a beginner's guide. It's the same heuristic our editors use to triage submissions. Three tests. Pass two of three and the object qualifies. Pass three of three and you've got a candidate.

Test 1, The Silhouette

Squint at the object. If you blur your eyes until detail disappears and the basic shape still reads as full, you have a candidate. Thiccc-ness is silhouette work. The Boeing 747 passes this test from a kilometer away. So does a cement mixer. So does a heritage tomato held against a white backdrop.

Things that fail Test 1: anything that requires close inspection to register as substantial. A heavy steel ingot is dense but its silhouette is rectangular and unremarkable. A sleek modern fridge fails, too much vertical, not enough volume. The shape has to do the talking.

Test 2, The Ratio

Find the object's proportions. Thiccc-ness usually shows up in a width-to-height ratio that exceeds expectations for the category. A normal pickup truck has a back end roughly proportional to its cabin. A Ford F-450 with dual rear wheels breaks the ratio: the rear is wider than category logic dictates. That's the tell.

For produce, the ratio test is volume-to-stem: a tomato carrying three pounds on a stem the diameter of a pencil is doing structural work that gravity normally vetoes. For appliances, it's volume-to-doorframe: if the fridge had to apologize to the kitchen, you have one.

Test 3, The Character

This is the soft test, but it separates clean candidates from clinical ones. The object should have character: weathering, vintage detailing, a paint job that suggests use, a stance that suggests opinion. Generic stock objects fail this even when they pass tests 1 and 2. A brand-new white refrigerator from a marketing render is shape without soul. The same fridge, ten years old, in a beat-up garage, with a magnet from a long-closed pizza place, that's a candidate.

You can't fake character; you can only photograph it. This is why so many submissions fail at this stage. The submitter spotted the silhouette and the ratio but the photo was a stock-image render. Photographs of objects-in-context outperform studio shots almost every time.

Common false positives

• Bodybuilders, failing the rule "things, not people" before any test even runs. See the editorial guide.
• Animals, wrong category. Even very round ones.
• Cartoon renders, we work in photographs. Illustrated objects are out.
• Round-but-uniform objects, bowling balls, billiard balls, marbles. Spheres aren't thiccc; they're just spherical. Thiccc-ness implies departure from expected proportion, not platonic geometry.

A worked example

You walk past an old Kenworth dump truck parked at a quarry. Apply the tests:

1. Silhouette: the bed fully extended, the cab tucked beneath. From half a block, the shape reads as full. Pass.
2. Ratio: the bed width is significantly wider than the cab. The rear axles double up. Pass.
3. Character: weathered paint, a deck of mud on the running boards, a forty-year-old hood ornament. Pass.

Three of three. Submit it.

Going deeper

The next time you spot a candidate, photograph it (with permission if it's on private property), and send it to the submission form. Read What Counts as Thiccc? for the editorial line. Subscribe to the RSS feed for daily examples that train the eye.

It takes about a week for the visual habit to set in. After that, you'll see them everywhere. Don't say we didn't warn you.