Trollface
Where it came from
Drawn in MS Paint in 2008 by Carlos Ramirez ("Whynne") and posted to DeviantArt, originally as a comic about trolling people on forums. The face quickly outgrew the comic and became the mascot of internet trolling itself.
Fixed exactly the five flagged problems and left everything else intact.
(1) still_alive changed 'dying' to 'dead' to match the prose, which says earnest use died with rage comics and it only survives ironically as a permanent icon. (2) Cut the three-adjective grin to two ('a stretched, mischievous grin'). (3) Dropped the inaccurate 'surreal' tag; tags are now reaction, format, relatable — relatable added as the honest third per the editor's allowance, covering the ironic-goblin self-recognition. (4) Reduced body em-dashes from three to one: '"U MAD?" — you slap' became a period, and 'everywhere — every other' became a colon, leaving a single em-dash in the final paragraph.
(5) Generalized the unsourced 'Xbox forums' to 'forums' rather than swapping in another made-up platform, per the iron rule on facts — DeviantArt/2008/Whynne and 'comic about trolling on forums' are all defensible, the specific Xbox detail was not. Files reviewed: /Users/shahmir/Development/whatisthismeme/src/scripts/memes-seed.ts (SeedMeme interface at line 36) and the voice memory file. imageUrl omitted as requested.
Search interest, over time
↳ data courtesy of google trends
