Wojak Meme

What does the Wojak meme mean?

Wojak — better known in English as Feels Guy — is a minimal MS Paint drawing of a bald man with a wistful, half-smiling face. Alone, it is a reaction image for melancholy, longing and quiet resignation ("I know that feel"). Together with its variants, it became the internet's cast of characters for labeling types of people: the doomed Doomer, the mocking Soyjak, the unthinking NPC.

Origin

• 2009: the earliest known archive of the drawing appears on December 16, 2009 on the meme site Sad and Useless. On Polish imageboards it circulates as ciepłotwarz.jpg ("warmface"). The original artist is unknown.
• 2010: a user named Wojak on the German imageboard Krautchan posts the image constantly, and the character takes his name ("wojak" is Polish for soldier/warrior).
• 2011: 4chan adopts it; the two-panel "I know that feel bro" hug fixes the English name Feels Guy.
• 2017–2021: the family explodes — Soyjak / "Soy Boy Face" (December 2017), Doomer (September 2018), NPC Wojak (2018), Doomer Girl (2020) and Chudjak (2020–2021).
• Today: Wojak is both a reaction image and a full visual language for political and identity memes, redrawn endlessly with new heads, hats and expressions.

Examples

• A "what people think X is vs. what X actually is" comparison uses the same cigarette-smoking Wojak on both sides to argue about young men's insecurities.
• The two-panel hug: one Wojak holds another and says "I know that feel bro" — the template for sympathy posts.
• Soyjak vs. Doomer pairings mock two online archetypes in a single frame.

Translation

• Literal reading: a crudely drawn bald man with a strange smile.
• Actual meaning: a stand-in for a mood ("that feel") or for a type of person, depending on which variant is used.
• Cross-language note: Wojak is native to internet English but travels through imageboards worldwide; the name stays "Wojak" in most languages, while captions get localized. English derivatives like "that feel when" are often kept as-is even in non-English posts.

FAQ

What is the Wojak meme?

Wojak is a minimalist MS Paint drawing of a bald man with a wistful half-smile, used as a reaction image for feelings like melancholy, longing or resignation. Since 2017 it has also grown into a cast of archetypes — Doomer, Soyjak, NPC, Chudjak — used to label recognizable types of people online.

Where does Wojak come from?

The earliest known archive of the drawing is from December 16, 2009 on the meme site Sad and Useless, and the image circulated on Polish imageboards as "ciepłotwarz.jpg" ("warmface"). In 2010 a Krautchan user named Wojak kept posting it and the character took his name; 4chan spread it in 2011, where the two-armed "I know that feel bro" hug fixed the name Feels Guy. The original artist is unknown.

What are the main Wojak variants?

The big ones are Soyjak / Soy Boy Face (2017), Doomer (2018), NPC Wojak (2018), Doomer Girl (2020) and Chudjak (2020–2021). Each is a new drawing in the same simple style, used to label a recognizable kind of person — and most of them spawned sub-variants of their own.