Wojak (from Polish wojak [ˈvɔjak] , loosely 'soldier' or 'fighter'), 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.
The meme subsequently grew in popularity on 4chan, where the character became associated with the phrases formerly used by wojak such as "I know that feel, bro", "that feel" or "that feel when".
The earliest surviving appearance of Wojak online was on 16 December 2009 on the meme sharing website Sad and Useless. [1] [2] Intelligencer describes the meme Wojak's expression as "pained but dealing with it". [3] The image spread to many imageboards, including 4chan, where by 2011 an image of two Wojaks hugging each other under the caption "I know that feel bro" gained popularity. [4]
Wojak was also paired with the template phrase "that feel" or "that feel when", often shortened to "tfw" or ">tfw". [4] [5]
Some variants paired him with the character Pepe the Frog (with catchphrases "feels good man" or "feels bad man"), in what Feldman describes as a "platonic romance within the memescape". [5]
In October 2018, a Wojak with a gray face, pointy nose and blank, emotionless facial expression, dubbed "NPC Wojak", became a popular visual representation for people who cannot think for themselves or make their own decisions, comparing them to non-player characters – computer-automated characters within a video game. NPC Wojak has gained online notoriety. [6] [7] The meme gained media attention, initially in Kotaku and The New York Times , due to its usage in parodying the supposed herd mentality of American liberals. [6] [8] This usage of the meme has been attributed to Donald Trump supporters. [9] About 1,500 Twitter accounts falsely posing as liberal activists with the NPC meme as a profile picture were suspended for spreading misinformation about the 2018 United States elections. [8] [9] On January 13, 2019, a conservative art collective known as "The Faction" hijacked a billboard for Real Time with Bill Maher , replacing Maher's image with that of the NPC Wojak. [10]
In November 2019, the "Coomer" Wojak picked up in popularity with the "No Nut November" trend. The Coomer depicts a smiling Wojak edit with unkempt hair, red rimmed eyes, and an untidy beard. This Wojak is sometimes depicted with a skinny frame, and a large, muscular right arm resulting from excessive masturbation. It is generally understood to represent someone with a pornography addiction. [11] Much of this meme's popularity can be attributed to the "Coomer Pledge", a viral internet trend which dared people to abstain from masturbation for all of November, and change their profile picture to an image of the Coomer if they were to fail. [12]
The doomer is an image macro and character archetype that first appeared on 4chan. The image typically depicts Wojak wearing a black watch cap and a black hooded sweatshirt, with dark circles under his eyes, while smoking a cigarette. The archetype often embodies nihilism, clinical depression, hopelessness, and despair, with a belief in the incipient end of the world to causes ranging from climate apocalypse, to peak oil, to alcoholism, to (more locally) opioid addiction. [13] [14] [15] The meme first appeared on 4chan's /r9k/ board in September 2018. [16]
A related meme format, "doomer girl", began appearing on 4chan in January 2020, and it soon moved to other online communities, including Reddit and Tumblr, often by women claiming it from its 4chan origins. [16] This format is described by The Atlantic as "a quickly sketched cartoon woman with black hair, black clothes, and sad eyes ringed with red makeup". The doomer girl character is often associated with the e-girl and alternative subcultures. The character often appears in image macros interacting with the original doomer character. [16] [17] The format is often compared to rage comics. [18]
Soyjak, a portmanteau of "soy" and "wojak", is a variation of Wojak that combines Wojak-style illustrations with additional features to allude to a soy boy , such as a gaping "cuckface" with an excited expression, glasses, stubble, and a balding head. It is commonly paired with the masculine Gigachad meme. [19] [20]
The Big Brain Wojak is a variation with glasses, a significantly enlarged head, and visible brain wrinkles. The most common form of Big Brain Wojak has a head so comically large that the Wojak sits on it like a chair. The meme was initially used on 4chan to mock others' political or controversial opinions. It is typically used online when attempting to call out those who are pretentious or wannabe intellectuals. There are many subsequent versions of the big brain meme, typically with slightly varying messages. The opposite of the Big Brain Wojak is the Brainlet Wojak, depicted with a tiny bump of a brain on top of a small head, often used to portray self-described intellectuals. [21]
The "tradwife" or "trad girl" Wojak depicts a blonde woman in a blue dress with a daisy pattern print. The "Tradwife" Wojak specifically embodies traditional gender roles and conservative values, often depicted as a woman dressed in vintage or modest clothing, emphasizing homemaking, traditional family values, and a rejection of modern feminist ideals. [22]
The "Wifejak" Wojak is a redhead Wojak designed to embody stereotypical traits associated with "typical wife behavior". In the memes, the character usually says a message that parodies what a stereotypical wife may say, such as "I'm cold" or "I just threw 30 cardboard boxes into the garage". [23]
2chan may refer to:
An Internet meme, or meme, is a cultural item that spreads across the Internet, primarily through social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit. Internet memes manifest in a variety of formats, including images, videos, GIFs, and other viral content. Key characteristics of memes include their tendency to be parodied, their use of intertextuality, their viral dissemination, and their continual evolution. The term "meme" was originally introduced by Richard Dawkins in 1972 to describe the concept of cultural transmission.
Doomers are people who are extremely pessimistic or fatalistic about global problems such as overpopulation, peak oil, climate change, ecological overshoot, pollution, nuclear weapons, and runaway artificial intelligence. The term, and its associated term doomerism, arose primarily on social media. Some doomers assert that there is a possibility these problems will bring about human extinction.
Frogs play a variety of roles in culture, appearing in folklore and fairy tales such as the Brothers Grimm story of The Frog Prince. In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, frogs symbolized fertility, while in classical antiquity, the Greeks and Romans associated frogs with fertility, harmony, and licentiousness.
Moe anthropomorphism is a form of anthropomorphism in anime, manga, and games where moe qualities are given to non-human beings, objects, concepts, or phenomena. In addition to moe features, moe anthropomorphs are also characterized by their accessories, which serve to emphasize their original forms before anthropomorphosis. The characters here, usually in a kind of cosplay, are drawn to represent an inanimate object or popular consumer product. Part of the humor of this personification comes from the personality ascribed to the character and the sheer arbitrariness of characterizing a variety of machines, objects, and even physical places as cute.
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, except for staff, and users typically post anonymously. As of 2022, 4chan receives more than 22 million unique monthly visitors, of whom approximately half are from the United States.
Trollface or Troll Face is a rage comic meme image of a character donning a mischievous smile, used to symbolise internet trolls and trolling. It is one of the oldest and most widely known rage comic faces.
A non-player character (NPC), also called a non-playable character, is a character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster or referee rather than by another player. In video games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer that has a predetermined set of behaviors that potentially will impact gameplay, but will not necessarily be the product of true artificial intelligence.
A rage comic is a short cartoon strip using a growing set of pre-made cartoon faces, or rage faces, which usually express rage or some other simple emotion or activity. They are usually crudely drawn in Microsoft Paint or other simple drawing programs, and were most popular in the early 2010s. These webcomics have spread much in the same way that Internet memes do, and several memes have originated in this medium. They have been characterized by Ars Technica as an "accepted and standardized form of online communication." The popularity of rage comics has been attributed to their use as vehicles for humorizing shared experiences. The range of expression and standardized, easily identifiable faces has allowed uses such as teaching English as a foreign language.
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 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.
The slang term Chad has historically been applied in different contexts. It originated in the UK, where it was used to describe a particular humorous ad-hoc cartoon. Later, it was employed in Chicago as a derogatory description for young, upper-class, urban males. In modern internet slang, the term generally refers to an "alpha" or otherwise hyper-masculine male.
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, decorated with their national flags. Comics feature the characters in various scenarios, generally poking fun at national stereotypes, international relations, and historical events, with the balls 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 graphic art software, often made to intentionally look crudely drawn.
/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, Islamophobic, 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 comic 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.
"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. It is part of a storyline in which the main character Ethan and his fiancée Lilah are expecting their first child. Presented as a four-panel comic with no dialogue, the strip 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.
The NPC, derived from non-player character, is an Internet meme that represents people deemed to not think for themselves; those who lack introspection or intrapersonal communication; those whose identity is deemed entirely determined by their surroundings and the information they consume, with no conscious processing whatsoever being done by the person themselves. The meme gained further viral status on TikTok in 2022, with the surge of "NPC Streamers". The NPC meme, which graphically is based on the Wojak meme, was created in July 2016 by an anonymous author and first published on the imageboard 4chan, where the idea and inspiration behind the meme were introduced.
A tradwife is a woman who believes in and practices traditional gender roles and marriages. Some may choose to take a homemaking role within their marriage, and others leave their careers to focus on meeting their family's needs in the home.
The Happy Merchant is a common name for an image depicting an antisemitic caricature of a Jewish man.
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.
The blue-eyed, blonde-haired girl is supposed to represent a "tradwife," or traditional wife: a group of real conservative women who celebrate holding traditionally feminine roles, following their husbands, and being white... In one meme, she is positioned side by side with a caricature of a "liberated feminist" — the feminist being the one mocked,.. The tradwife meme seen going around is not "just a joke," but a clear example of alt-right, racist, and antisemitic tropes entering the mainstream online discourse.
