In slang, a troll is a person who posts or makes inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages online or in real life, with the intent of provoking others into displaying emotional responses, or manipulating others' perception, thus acting as a bully or a provocateur. The behavior is typically for the troll's amusement, or to achieve a specific result such as disrupting a rival's online activities or purposefully causing confusion or harm to other people.
The Nintendo Comics System was a series of comic books published by Valiant Comics in 1990 and 1991. It was part of a licensing deal with Nintendo, featuring characters from their video games and the cartoons based on them.
An image macro is a piece of digital media featuring a picture, or artwork, with some form of text superimposed. The text frequently appears at the top and bottom of the image. Image macros were one of the most common forms of internet memes in the 2000s, and often featured witty messages or catchphrases, although not all image macros are necessarily humorous. LOLcats, which are images of expressive cats coupled with texts, are considered to be the first notable occurrence of image macros. Advice animal image macros, also referred to as stock-character macros, are also highly associated with the image macro template.
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature, cooking, weapons, music, history, anime, fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Registration is not available and users typically post anonymously. As of 2022, 4chan receives more than 22 million unique monthly visitors, of which approximately half are from the United States.
Monica is a Brazilian fictional character and Mauricio de Sousa's best-known creation. Introduced in 1963, she serves as the main protagonist and title character of the Monica and Friends comic book series and media franchise.
Pedobear is an Internet meme that became popular through the imageboard 4chan. As the name suggests, it is portrayed as a pedophilic cartoon bear. It is a concept used to mock child sex offenders or people who have any sexual interest in children or "jailbait". The bear image has been likened to bait used to lure children or as a mascot for pedophiles.
Trollface or Troll Face is a rage comic meme image of a character wearing a mischievous smile, used to symbolise internet trolls and trolling. It is one of the oldest and most widely known rage comic faces.
Rule 34 is an Internet meme which claims that Internet pornography exists concerning every possible topic. The concept is commonly depicted as fan art of normally non-erotic subjects engaging in sexual behavior and/or activity. It can also include writings, animations, images, GIFs and any other form of media to which the internet provides opportunities for proliferation and redistribution.
Countryballs, also known as Polandball, is a geopolitical satirical art style, genre, and internet meme, predominantly used in online comics strips in which countries or political entities are personified as balls with eyes without pupils, decorated with their national flags. Comics feature the characters in various scenarios, generally poking fun at national stereotypes, international relations, and historical events, with them moving about by walking or jumping. Other common features in Countryball strips include non-English countries speaking in broken English—with vocabularies of their national languages included—political incorrectness, and black comedy. Strips are generally created using Microsoft Paint or more advanced tools, often made to intentionally look crudely drawn.
Meme Run is an endless running video game created by American indie developer Ninja Pig Studios for the Wii U console's eShop service. The game features extensive use of Internet memes; for example, the player character is a stick figure with a trollface for a head, and the levels are made up of Lenny faces. The game was designed to appeal to both hardcore and casual audiences, but has been widely criticized both before and after its release for its perceived low quality.
/pol/, short for "Politically Incorrect", is an anonymous political discussion imageboard on 4chan. As of 2022, it is the most active board on the site. It has had a substantial impact on Internet culture. It has acted as a platform for far-right extremism; the board is notable for its widespread racist, white supremacist, antisemitic, anti-Muslim, misogynist, and anti-LGBT content. /pol/ has been linked to various acts of real-world extremist violence. It has been described as one of the "[centers] of 4chan mobilization", a title also ascribed to /b/.
Pepe the Frog is a webcomic character and Internet meme created by cartoonist Matt Furie. Designed as a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body, Pepe originated in Furie's 2005 comic Boy's Club. The character became an Internet meme when his popularity steadily grew across websites such as Myspace, Gaia Online, and 4chan in 2008. By 2015, he had become one of the most popular memes used on 4chan and Tumblr. Different types of Pepe memes include "Sad Frog", "Smug Frog", "Angry Pepe", "Feels Frog", and "You will never..." Frog. Since 2014, "rare Pepes" have been posted on the "meme market" as if they were trading cards.
DreamWorks Animation's Shrek film series, based on William Steig's book of the same name, has a underground Internet fandom that started around 2009.
"Loss", sometimes referred to as "Loss.jpg", is a strip published on June 2, 2008, by Tim Buckley for his gaming-related webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del. Set during a storyline in which the main character Ethan and his fiancée Lilah are expecting their first child, the strip—presented as a four-panel comic with no dialogue—shows Ethan entering a hospital, where he sees Lilah weeping in a hospital bed after suffering a miscarriage. Buckley cited events in his life as inspiration for the comic.
Bowsette or Koopa-hime, is a fan-made, moe anthropomorphized and gender-swapped version of the Mario franchise character Bowser, in which he is transformed by the Super Crown power-up to resemble the franchise character Princess Peach. The character was originally created on 19 September 2018 by Ayyk92, a Malaysian online artist, as part of a comic strip which he posted to Twitter. Bowsette subsequently became an internet meme and rose in popularity internationally, with related hashtags in English and Japanese trending on Twitter; several professional Japanese artists contributed their own renditions of the character on the website.
Wojak, also known as Feels Guy, is an Internet meme that is, in its original form, a simple, black-outlined cartoon drawing of a bald man with a wistful expression. It may have emerged in 2009 on a Polish imageboard named vichan, from where it was later reposted to the German imageboard krautchan in 2010 by a poster called "wojak". It was posted on December 16, 2009, on an image aggregation website.
Rule 63 is an Internet meme that states that, as a rule, "for every given male character, there is a female version of that character" and vice versa. It is one of the "Rules of the Internet" that began in 2006 as a Netiquette guide on 4chan and were eventually expanded upon by including deliberately mocking rules, of which Rule 63 is an example. It began to see general use in fandom communities as a term to refer to both fan-made and official gender flips of existing fictional characters.
Ebola-chan is an Internet meme depicting a moe anthropomorphization of the Ebola virus and was popularized on 4chan. The first known image of Ebola-chan began on the Japanese social media site, Pixiv, in 2014. A few days after, it was posted 4chan's /pol/ thread, who began posting messages praising Ebola-chan. Soon after, 4chan users began spreading the meme to Nairaland, the largest online message board in Nigeria, accompanying images of Ebola-chan with racist messages and associated conspiracy theories. This included claims that Ebola was CIA-made and that white people were performing rituals for Ebola to spread. The meme's spread has been considered racist and has been attributed to increased mistrust between West Africans and medical professionals.
