Rage Comics: The Stick-Figure Revolution (2008)

Rage Comics were crude MS Paint drawings that emerged from 4chan around 2008, then exploded on Reddit’s r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu board. They featured a cast of stick-figure “rage faces” — FFFFUUUU, Forever Alone, Me Gusta, Troll Face, Y U No Guy — that anyone could copy-paste into four-panel comics about everyday frustrations.

The low barrier was the magic. You didn’t need art skills. You just needed to remix existing faces to tell a story about your coworker eating your lunch or a bad date. At their peak around 2011-2012, millions of people were making rage comics every day. They were the first truly participatory meme format — a DIY comic book where the characters were borrowed and the stories were yours.