Me Gusta

About

Me Gusta is a rage comic face that is typically used to express one’s approval of an awkward or perverse situation. The caption “Me gusta” translates to “I like it” in Spanish. In its beginning, the phrase conveyed an odd sense of pleasure in sexually perverse contexts, but the meaning has since broadened to describe a more general state of being disturbed and pleased at the same time.

Origin

The colloquial Spanish phrase “Me Gusta” was first adopted into a rage comic drawing by illustrator Matt Oswald, who uploaded his artwork onto 4chan ^[5] and Reddit ^[6] on March 18th, 2010. The drawing was also uploaded onto his personal Tumblr blog^[3] and DeviantART^[4] account. Oswald eventually revealed himself as the creator of “Me Gusta” face in a Reddit thread^[1] as well as an Ask Me Anything (AMA) thread^[2] on March 8th, 2011.

    

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Editor’s Note: This section is currently being researched.

In December 2010, the single topic blog Me Gusta Face^[12] was launched to curate the comics. As of May 2012, the series ranked in the “Fuck Yeah” tier on Memegenerator ^[7] and thousands of “Me Gusta” rage comics can be found on Tumblr ^[8], Memebase^[9] and on Reddit’s popular F7U12 subreddit.^[10]

Notable Examples

  
  

Derivatives

No Me Gusta

No Me Gusta variation of Me Gusta It is used as to awkwardly dislike.

Me Gusta Mucho

“Me Gusta Mucho” is a variation of Me Gusta with the mouth changed to a smile. It is used to show extreme pleasure as opposed to simple pleasure.

Forever Alone

About

Forever Alone is an exploitable rage comic character that is used to express loneliness and disappointment with life. The face has also been used as an advice animal and inspired the creation of the snowclone template “Forever an X.”

Origin

Forever Alone is considered one of the first major rage comic spin-off characters to be creater after the original Rage Guy, which first sprang up on 4chan in 2009. According to various sources, the original comic was uploaded in a thread titled “April Fools” by FunnyJunk user Azuul on May 28th, 2010 (shown below).

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In early June 2010, another instance featuring a bachelor salaryman was posted on 4chan (shown below, left). On August 5th, 2010, Redditor L_E_G_E_N_D posted a Forever Alone rage comic titled “Prom FFFUUUU”^[14] (shown below, right), receiving over 275 up votes and 70 comments prior to being archived.

 

By September 2010, there were over 23,000 image results for “Forever Alone” on FunnyJunk^[3] and over 50,000 on Tumblr.^[4] On September 11th, single topic blog Forever Alone Comics^[19] was launched to curate the growing collection of four-pane comics. On September 15th, the /r/foreveralone^[23] subreddit was created, which received over 25,300 subscribers in the next three years. In early October, Forever Alone received mentions in several blogs, including Geekosystem^[5], Memebase^[15] and Uproxx.^[16] Meanwhile, the meaning of term “Forever Alone” gradually expanded from a rage comic reference to the more general statement of being alone. On February 13th, 2013, the International Business Times^[22] published a slideshow of notable Valentine’s Day Forever Alone comics and image macros. As of February 2013, a Facebook^[21] page titled “Forever Alone” has received over 7.2 million submissions.

Notable Examples

In the beginning, most rage comics were illustrated with the the basic four-pane template, but later grew into other formats like vertical comic strips, advice animals, multi-pane comics with dialogues and even animated GIFs.

Rage Comics

  

  

LOOL