ViralWorld

Wojak

You might remember it as Feels Guy, that feel when, I know that feel bro

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

Biggest memes ever21 of 32

2010·The social era·dramatic

A plainly drawn bald man with a wistful face, redrawn into hundreds of named characters that each stand for a type of person or a feeling.

At a glanceThe facts

Spread in
2010
Format
Meme
Era
The social era
Where it started
The Polish imageboard Vichan, in 2009
Original title
ciepłatwarz.jpg, “warm face”
Also known as
Feels Guy
Origin
Not an upload originally
Available
Not held by ViralWorld

What this wasThe story

A simple black-outlined drawing of a bald man with a wistful, resigned expression. It surfaced on the Polish imageboard Vichan as ciepłatwarz.jpg — warmface — and was carried to the German board Krautchan in 2010 by a poster called Wojak, whose name stuck. Paired with the phrase "that feel when", shortened to tfw, it became the standard way to caption a small private emotion.

The NPC variant was used in coordinated political misinformation before the 2018 US elections, and around 1,500 Twitter accounts using it were suspended. The character remains in constant daily use across imageboards, Discord and Twitter, mostly by people who have never heard the name Krautchan.

Why it matteredWhat changed

It became a vocabulary. Where earlier memes were single jokes, Wojak’s variants let people draw a whole argument as a cast of characters, and one of them, the NPC, became a political insult.

TimelineIn order

  1. Made

    The drawing appears on the Polish imageboard Vichan under the filename ciepłatwarz.jpg. Its author is unknown.1

  2. Posted

    The earliest archived copy is posted to the site Sad and Useless.1

  3. Found

    A user calling himself Wojak posts it on the German imageboard Krautchan, and the name passes to the picture.1

  4. Took off

    A drawing of two of the figures embracing, captioned “I know that feel bro”, is popular on 4chan.1

  5. Remixed

    The Doomer appears on 4chan’s /r9k/ board.1

  6. Mainstream

    The NPC, a grey-faced Wojak with no expression, spreads as an insult. Twitter suspends about 1,500 accounts posing as activists with the face.1

  7. Later

    An imageboard devoted to one variant, the soyjak, is founded.1

What people misrememberSet straight

Commonly remembered asA 4chan drawing.

ActuallyIt first appeared on a Polish imageboard, reached a German one in 2010 and came to 4chan after that.1

Commonly remembered asThe character is called Wojak.

ActuallyWojak was the handle of the person who posted it on Krautchan. The word is Polish, loosely “soldier” or “fighter”, and the file itself was called warm face.1

What it createdWhat came out of it

More from hereIn this collection

Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · 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 imageboard.

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 imageboard.

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

More from 2010You were there

The social eraThe same internet

ConnectedFollow it further

SourcesWhat was read

  1. Wikipedia — Wojak

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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