While playing on your social media outlets, you may have encountered the image to the left and wondered what in the world it was. Much like cute kittens on YouTube, “rage faces” are memes that have spread through social media networks. These faces are crudely hand drawn (or, rather, Paint drawn) expressions of how people internally feel in certain situations.
According to an excellent rage face timeline on Reddit, the first rage face appeared on 4chan. The next was the very popular “troll face” that was drawn by a DeviantArt user. From there, their popularity soared on Reddit, slowly extending to other social media sites such as Tumblr.
These depictions are hilarious and scarily accurate, giving the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” a literal meaning. Instead of replying to news articles, videos, or comments with words, people online post rage faces as their reactions.
The faces have extended past the realm of social media. There is now an app on Android phones containing every rage face in existence. People can send these faces to each other through text instead of using the standard “WOW!” or “OMG!” or “LOL!” reactions.
Rage faces are a great example of the pervasiveness social media has, not only in our culture, but also in our lives. These images help give internet conversations a more personal feel since people can picture how a person would look if they were discussing a topic face to face. Quick images are beginning to say more to us than actual words, prompting a new form of language that can transcend verbal language barriers.
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