In Rage Comics

In Rage Comics

On February 2nd, 2011, Redditor acodemaster posted a thread titled “My submission for the ‘True Story’ Panel – Neil Patrick Harris”^[2], suggesting a still shot (shown below, right) of Stinson from “Do I Know You?,” the first episode ofHow I Met Your Mother’s fourth season, be used for the rage face. Though many submissions were posted, the winning photo (shown below, left) was created by Redditor vorin.

Spread

The character was added to All The Rage Faces^[15] on September 11th, 2011. The “True Story” character quickly took off on the f7u12 subreddit, which has more than 12,000 results^[14] for the phrase as of September 2012, and numerous rage comics based on the character have been featured across other internet humor blogs, including Memebase^[5], FunnyJunk^[7] and 9gag.^[8] The popularity of the phrase also led to an image macro generator page on DIYLOL.^[4]Related merchandises featuring the “True Story” character can be also found on Zazzle^[6] and Etsy.^[16]

Additional rage comics using the character continue to be shared on Memebase^[10], Rage Comic Archive^[13] and Tumblr^[11], where users will also simply use the image as a reaction face in a text post. A Facebook fan page^[12] for the character has more than 157,000 likes as of September 2012.

Notable Examples

The reaction image is primarily used in the final panel of rage comics to re-emphasize the statement made in the preceding panel. On the f7u12 subreddit, such posts have been typically titled with the tag “[True Story].”