Rage Comics

Rage comics were short strips made from a shared set of crudely drawn faces, usually in Microsoft Paint, used to tell small stories about everyday frustrations and victories. The first is generally credited to a 4chan post in 2008 that ended in a furious red-faced scream.

By the early 2010s they were a language of their own on Reddit and beyond, with faces like Forever Alone, Me Gusta, Y U NO and Challenge Accepted. Ars Technica described them as an accepted, standardised form of online communication.

They faded as image macros and reaction GIFs took over, but for a few years they were how the internet told its stories.

Rage comics fell out of fashion in the mid-2010s, replaced by newer meme formats. They are remembered as the shared visual language of early Reddit.