{"id":7658,"date":"2015-08-14T00:01:01","date_gmt":"2015-08-14T07:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=7658"},"modified":"2015-08-08T15:22:01","modified_gmt":"2015-08-08T22:22:01","slug":"reaction-faces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=7658","title":{"rendered":"Reaction Faces"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think they’re funny, but I have no clue how they became so popular. You’ve probably seen them as well:
\nCommon images or memes used throughout social networking or any online interaction.
\n
\nThese images are nothing new. I believe the first, true common image dates back to before the Internet. It probably means nothing to the kids today, but growing up in the post-World War II era, I remember Kilroy Was Here, shown in Figure 1.<\/p>\n

\"Figure

Figure 1. Graffiti like this was common in the 1940s.<\/p><\/div>\n

At some point in time, images began to populate the Internet similar to how Kilroy popped up all over Europe.<\/p>\n

One of the earliest and most popular images is Trollface, shown in Figure 2.<\/p>\n

\"Figure

Figure 2. Trollface.<\/p><\/div>\n

Click here<\/a> to read the Trollface backstory, which is pretty interesting. The designer, Carlos Ramirez, has no idea that his creation would be so popular. I believe it spawned a garrison of similar images, all of which share the Windows Paint-like motif of the original Trollface.<\/p>\n

Computer Guy is another such image. He appears in Figure 3.<\/p>\n

\"Figure

Figure 3. The Computer Guy meme.<\/p><\/div>\n

Computer Guy is supposed to be you<\/em>, showing your reaction as you look at something on your computer monitor. This image and similar images fall into a general category called reaction images<\/em><\/p>\n

The reaction images are frequently posted on online sites to show the poster’s emotions or comments with regards to the subject or simply the direction the comment thread is taking. A host of reaction images can be found at http:\/\/knowyourmeme.com\/memes\/reaction-images<\/a> (Be careful with the links on that page: One of them I clicked went into a “your computer has a virus” click-trap.)<\/p>\n

What’s interesting to me is looking up the origins of the images. I thought most of them were concocted by users like Carlos Ramirez. As it turns out, a lot of the images come from comics, either online or from the real world. Yet, knows what makes an image stick and others just fall off the radar? It’s probably the same phenomenon that makes the Pet Rock popular but not any other novelty toy to that same degree. Who knows what the culture will latch on to?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Definitions for those images you see on social networking sites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7668,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7658\/revisions\/7668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}