ViralWorld

Trollface

You might remember it as Problem?, Troll Face

The archive does not hold a copy of this image that it may show.

Biggest memes ever4 of 32

2008·Early YouTube·funny

A black-and-white MS Paint drawing of a face with a huge, knowing grin, used to mark that somebody has been wound up on purpose.

At a glanceThe facts

Remembered as
Problem?
Spread in
2008
Where it started
deviantart
Format
Meme
Era
Early YouTube
Made by
Carlos Ramirez, then an 18-year-old college student in Oakland, posting as Whynne
Taken from
A comic called Trolls, drawn in MS Paint
Used to say
I did that on purpose, and you fell for it
Origin
Not an upload originally
Available
Not held by ViralWorld

What this wasThe story

A leering, wide-mouthed face drawn in Microsoft Paint, used to mark the moment a joke was at somebody else's expense. It was one panel of a rage comic called Trolls, drawn on 19 September 2008 by Carlos Ramirez, an eighteen-year-old college student in Oakland, and published to his deviantART page under the name Whynne.

Ramirez registered Trolls with the US Copyright Office in 2010 and told Kotaku in 2015 that licensing it had earned him over $100,000, with peak months around $15,000 — an early demonstration that a meme could have an owner, and that the owner could enforce it. A Wii U game was pulled for using the face without permission.

Why it matteredWhat changed

It is the face of the rage-comic era and one of the few memes from it with a known author who registered the copyright and was paid. It showed that a doodle posted anonymously could be owned, licensed and enforced.

TimelineIn order

  1. Made

    Carlos Ramirez draws the comic Trolls in MS Paint and publishes it on his DeviantArt page under the name Whynne. He also posts it to 4chan, where the face is lifted out and reused.1

  2. Picked up

    The face reaches Reddit and Urban Dictionary, and then Imgur and Facebook.1

  3. Later

    Ramirez registers Trolls with the United States Copyright Office.1

  4. Corrected

    In an interview with Kotaku, Ramirez says licensing and settlements have brought him more than 100,000 US dollars.1

  5. Later

    Ramirez announces plans to sell the face as a non-fungible token.1

What people misrememberSet straight

Commonly remembered asA drawing made to celebrate trolling.

ActuallyThe comic it comes from is about how pointless trolling is. The face was drawn to mock the troll, and trolls adopted it.1

Commonly remembered asAn anonymous 4chan drawing nobody owns.

ActuallyIt has a named author and a registered copyright. A Wii U game that used the face as its main character was taken down for infringing it.1

LegacyWhat it left behind

More from hereIn this collection

Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · a moment that changed what the internet did next · copied, redrawn and reused until the original stopped mattering · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later

This spread as an image people copied and reposted, not as a video upload. Originally published on deviantart.

Where it came fromWhat we know

There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This spread as an image people copied and reposted, not as a video upload. Originally published on deviantart.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

When
The sources below date the original to 2008-09-19. ViralWorld records this as a cited claim rather than an established publication date, because it holds no copy to check it against.

What this was built on, each one a record of its own.

More from 2008You were there

More from early YouTubeMore of the archive

ConnectedFollow it further

SourcesWhat was read

  1. Wikipedia — Trollface

Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things

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