The ‘Wojak’ meme continues to be the sonorous language for the unfocused, the nihilistic, and the isolated.
Crippling loneliness. Nauseous melancholy. Aching regrets. No, I’m not talking about NSW’s second lockdown. I’m talking about the Wojak meme – the emotive-focused MS Paint illustration with polarizing levels of social resonance.
Exploring emotions appears to be a reoccurring theme in the meme verse. There’s the ‘we live in a society’ phenomenon, the ‘vibe check’ mantra, hell, even the ‘mentally I’m here’ meme had its heyday.
Yet somehow, the Wojak meme outlives the others, continuing to spread its doomer-gloom across Facebook groups and sketchy 4chan threads everywhere. But to explain Wojak’s longevity, we must start at the beginning.
Origins
The sad, socially fragile man we now know as ‘Wojak’ was born in 2009, drawn into the pages of the comic series I Wish I Was At Home (Playing Videogames). The image portrayed the man alone in the corner of a party, with text describing his inner turmoil.
Thanks to a Polish imageboard poster, the face became known as Wojak, who reposted the image with the file name, ‘ciepla twarz.jpg’, meaning ‘warm face’.
In true intertextual fashion, the Wojak started getting paired with many popular 4chan expressions, such as >tfw no gf, which stands for ‘that feeling [I get] when [I have] no girlfriend’.
Wojak was also popularised with the phrase, ‘I know that feel, bro’, which featured two Wojak’s in a tight embrace. For me, the hug evokes the helplessness of Billy Joel’s Piano Man–“they’re sharing a drink called loneliness, but it’s better than drinking alone!”
Wojak existed with these formats for years and years, slowly becoming the unanimous visual pairing for comedic observations regarding male grief and emptiness.
The meme even occasionally got paired with Pepe the Frog, which Brian Feldman of Intelligencer described as a “platonic romance within the memescape”.
Then in 2018, almost ten years after its debut, Wojak’s character received a significant update. Was Wojak finally going to crawl out of his bedsheets to find true love again? … Absolutely not. In fact, the poor man had just become the internet weapon of choice to troll Liberals and Social Justice Warriors.
The NPC Wojak
The 2018 update featured Wojak reimagined as an NPC (non-playable character), now being used by Trump supporters to stir the pot.
Why and how? Well, 4chan discussions were arguing that liberals fail to have an ‘internal monologue’ and that their herd-like mentality made them incapable of making decisions, much like a video game NPC.
This, of course, is a sweeping generalisation and should be taken with a grain of salt, or a drop of truth. However, it didn’t stop online trolls from causing a scene. Around 1500 Twitter accounts (maybe more) had the Wojak NPC as their profile picture at its zenith.
These people pretended to be Liberals to spread serious disinformation about the 2018 Election. It was a sickly social commentary that essentially labelled progressives as zombies. Ironically, the NPC avatar allowed the user to troll without revealing their identity or taking responsibility for their actions. Twitter eventually shut down these NPC accounts following various media exposés.
The Doomer Wojak
The NPC wasn’t the only spinoff Wojak received during 2018. Building upon the original Wojak’s heartbreak and isolation, the ‘Doomer’ was founded, giving the man a beanie and a generous dose of teen angst. Just take a look at this nicotine addled, underslept disaster.
The doomer is perhaps the most affecting of all the Wojak renditions. It became a way for emotionally repressed teens of the digital era to connect and discuss their issues, even if it was only through irony. The doomer also became a philosophic figure of sorts, influenced by Nihilism and Malthusianism.
— Natalie Wynn (@ContraPoints) April 24, 2021
Mammoth sized problems like resource availability, climate crisis, overpopulation made life not even worth living for our doomer. But there was also tragedy in his micro world. The Wojak doomer rendition came with a female counterpart, who always chose a ‘Chad’ archetype over our tired Wojak. Such is life.
What can we learn from Wojak?
Let’s exit out of the ironic, rapidly cascading memeverse for a second and ask ourselves what we can take away from Wojak?
Well, we know that the meme is focused on men’s mental health and that it has resonated with millions. We also know that recently, Lifeline had its largest amount of callers in a day.
So, as lockdown turns our days into a mundane blur, we should strive to check up on our friends and family and let them know we’re thinking of them.
Because while Wojak is hilarious, we wouldn’t wish his mental state on our worst enemies.
