I think the reason for this is that there has been a palpable shift in the content of what people are communicating… and the old rage faces are poorly suited to what people are using them for. They provided a different “visual vocabulary”.
The old rage faces served the purpose as shorthanding feeling and emotions visually. I’ll leave this as an exercise to the reader as to consider why 4chan users may have found an emotional shorthand vocabulary very appealing.
They were used very generally for storytelling.
Wojaks are primarily used to cue the reader to who is “good” and who is “bad”. Who is the cuck. It’s primarily a mechanism to lay out some type of disagreement and visually diminish one side. In this way, they’re not fla mechanism for storytelling, they’re a mechanism for persuasion.
“General storytelling” NOW comes in the form of a Twitter screenshot.
Anyhow, tl;dr: ragefaces and wojaks serve a different communicative purpose, and for some reason Twitter screenshots ejected ragefaces from thier niche
That’s really interesting and I think you’re right. I like your term, “visual vocabulary”. Rad reply
Spot on.
I find memeology fascinating. It really has shaped our world more than people might realize.
It’s amazing what a journey Pepe has taken. From being associated with the 2015 MAGA movement to being a symbol of 2019 Hong Kong protests.
I thought the associations with the alt right movement would’ve killed Pepe as a meme, but he managed to wash those bad associations away.
And I contend that rage comics convey way more variety and emotion. I really want them back :(
Pepe memes have far, far more variety and emotion. Customized pepes for days like sad child pepe, star trek nerd pepe, angry pepe, pepe merged with other memes, etc.
Rage comics always ended in rage and got old fast.
Note: I don’t like pepe memes because they are pepe, but a lot of the better memes happen to have pepe shoved in. They would also work with nearly any other cartoon character.
Ew yuck, no. Way too many incel takes and cringe content.
as opposed to pepe and wojacks…?
tbf we’d be fine without both
Oh no! There are incels and cringe content on the internet! We shouldn’t use the internet!
Are you conflating rage comics with the entirety of the internet?
Yes, because they’re a cringe incel
I personally hate Wojaks. They’re so fucking ugly and have no personality unlike the rage comics that at least had their own unique (also ugly) style. Each rage comic character was different too, you can’t confuse Me Gusta with the Cereal Guy or the NO. Guy.
It’s because they’re also popular with right wingers and those folks love running a joke into the ground.
… Rage faces are out?
