Couple that with the internet’s rabid attachment to nostalgia as of the past few years, and a revival seems more than plausible. Nobody is really asking for new rage comics, but there’s nothing stopping anyone from making them if a new idea pops up. We can look at Mom Can You Give Me Money? as a prime example of a format that literally started as a rage comic derivative before coming back this year with a decidedly more absurd bend to it (example from 2012 shown left, 2017 shown right).Ĭonsidering this, you could say that rage comics never really left, they just evolved and changed. There’s simply more that can be done with them now, making the format ripe for a revival. There are new references and events to attach to the format, and the popular style of comedy has shifted, becoming more abstract and open. The world went through a lot of changes in the time between Are Ya Winning Son? being popular the first time and then again in 2020. This may be exactly why they managed to come back with such passion: nobody was forcing them, they just became funny again. Instead, they came back under everyone’s noses with fresh new variants. There was no call to revive either of these memes. Another example can be seen in Are Ya Winning, Son?, a format that originally popped up in 2014 but came back with a passion earlier this year, solidifying itself as an unshakeable classic in the memeverse (example from 2014 left, 2020 right). The most popular example has to be Doge, a meme that was brought back from the dead in a glorious way through Dogelore. The claim that rage comics are making a comeback is admittedly a bold one, but it’s not an absurd one considering we’ve seen meme revivals before. Now, in 2020, it seems as though rage comics are making their way back into the spotlight, exciting 25-year-old-boomers across the globe. Since their peak, rage comics have become a relic of their time, with many people frequently citing them as “cringey” and “dated” these days.
Rage comics peaked around 2012 before steadily declining in the following years, stepping aside to allow new storytelling meme formats to take the spotlight, like webcomics, Dogelore, and, of course, Wojak, which originally began as a rage comic character. Plus, they were really fun to make, and new characters were constantly popping up to use, effectively reshaping what a meme could even be. They offered an exciting new way to meme that involved storylines rather than single-image Advice Animals or reaction posts. Thus, rage comics were born, and for the next four years, they would dominate every social media platform on the web, from Tumblr to Facebook to 4chan and beyond. We don’t live in a sane world though, and the meme economy of the time thrived on relatability even more so than it does now. In any sane world, this comic would have been a flash in the pan, disappearing with the 4chan post forever once it expired.
The comic was extremely simple, considering both its art style and humor, depicting a man known as Rage Guy taking a dump only to have the water splash back on him, resulting in the now-iconic scream of “FFFFUUUU-“ that you can almost hear echoing through the room when you read it. In August 2008, the internet was changed forever when an anonymous user posted the first-ever rage comic to 4chan.
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