History of neo-ragecomics

Beginning around November 2020, and dying some time before April 2021, a new wave of rage comic memes happened. Some people are confused about how it happened, and may tell the story wrong. I saw it happen, and I want to tell it right, or at least a little better than I have usually seen.

One of the best neo-ragecomics; artist unknown

0. Contents

1. Background
2. Oil
3. Schizo Trollface
4. Incident memes
5. Tesla Coils
6. Conclusion

1. Background

For background, it is important to know what Trollface and Rage Comics in general were. In particular, you should remember that a common theme in these comics was what came to be known as “Troll Science” or “Troll Physics”, in which the trollface character would present an experiment or project which relied upon a false physical principle – in particular, at the time, perpetual motion machines involving magnets. It was the 2010s, and the Insane Clown Posse song Miracles had recently dazzled the internet with the question – f—ing magnets, how do they work? – which became a theme of much of on-line humor at the time.

A meme which fits the period well, although it might not be from it.

2. Oil

For unknown reasons, the comic about covering yourself in oil first became popular in November 2020, although it may have existed prior to that, as Know Your Meme claims it did.

Although I cannot prove it, I believe that the first comic was in fact the following one, about covering other people in oil:

This version, having a title that introduces the meme, makes sense for an attempt to reintroduce an old trend, and more importantly, since it was the other version that took off, I think it would be strange for someone to make this one if it did not predate it. Anyway, the more famous comic is here:

It blew up amazingly. Importantly, for some reason it was quickly spun into surreal and horror versions.

3. Schizo Trollface

Schizo trollface comics may have existed for a long time, but the new wave was clearly spurred by Cover Yourself In Oil. Below are some of the best surreal/horror versions of CYIO:

Blood version

Concrete version

Flesh version

The Voices Are Back (Make It Stop)

Three important events happened with the rise of schizo trollface comics.

First, Heaven Stairway Incident was made. Heaven Stairway Incident is the following comic:

Heaven Stairway Incident

This particularly popular horror comic, perfectly playing off of the Cover Yourself In Oil theme in an unsettling way, spawned a whole genre of what may be called incident memes, on which see section 4, below.

Second, /r/true_reddit, which had existed for some years, became much more active. I have no information on its activity prior to that, so I will not speak more at length on it. It is a private subreddit of schizo trollface comics, having quite varied content.

Third, Cereal Guy Memes joined the scene.

Cereal Guy Memes is a Facebook meme page that was a major driver of the new rage comic meme wave. It began to post regularly quite early in 2020, and its first few posts had an unmatched brand of surreal/horror humor, incorporating various religious elements:

Early Cereal Guy Memes, exhibit A, “Jinn”

Early Cereal Guy Memes, exhibit B, “Problem?”

Early Cereal Guy Memes, exhibit C, “Torment”

Early Cereal Guy Memes, exhibit D, “Sexytime”

We will have reason to say more about Cereal Guy Memes in later sections; first, incident memes.

4. Incident memes

Incident memes were not good. I do not know who first had the idea to make them after Heaven Stairway, but at any rate, they quickly became cringe, and a subreddit was made for them, which only made this worse – /r/TrollFaceIncident, which was not private like /r/true_reddit. The following memes are shown just for illustration.

Touch Tone Telephone Incident, from the subreddit

Hell’s Bells Incident, from the subreddit

Get People Mad, a meta meme commenting on how cringe “incident memes” are, and how ironic this is. Not from the subreddit, but I don’t know whence for sure.

Poop Nigga Incident, a meta meme posted by popular surreal/horror meme page Pains of Hell Wellness Clinic. Cereal Guy Memes would later reference it in one of his comics.

5. Tesla Coils

An important schizo trollface comic to mention at this point is the tesla coils comic, sometimes titled “How to Get to Heaven”, as in this post of the video version. Its author is unknown, but it might be /u/EXIV88 on Reddit, since his post of the comic on /r/true_reddit is the earliest I have seen – January 2, 2021.

The comic consisted of 10 separate images which are usually collated for convenience, as they are below; the two extra black squares are not part of the comic.

Tesla Coils

It was immensely popular and widely shared; video memes were made based on it, most importantly this one and this one.

Cereal Guy Memes would later make a comic based on it, which would become so famous that many people came to think that the original was made by him also. He played off of this splendidly, making various other comics in which a terrorist screams “I hate the antichrist”, and adopting the phrase as a kind of slogan.

The most important Cereal Guy Memes comic that was based on the Tesla Coils comic

Later, it would become a meme, by itself, to make edits of the first panel of this Cereal Guy Memes comic. Since these memes were very simple jokes, I have collated 9 of them below to have more memes with less scrolling.

Nine examples of the panel meme

6. Conclusion

The wave is over, basically, except for Cereal Guy Memes. His page remains active; however, it is no longer the kind of humor seen in the early days. Cereal Guy Memes has begun to make trollface comics about his own extravagant and syncretic religious opinions; he honestly believes that he is receiving visions, and his newer, religious comics have almost no humor to them. It is beyond the scope of this blog post to attempt to characterize them; at this point, it seems best to just tell you to see them for yourself, if you want to.

As far as I know, no one else is making any rage comics worth noticing.

I have cataloged most of these developments near the end of the wave by making albums in a page made for the purpose, Neorage Compilation, but only now did I write a narrative blog post to keep the record straight. I kept a much larger meme record at the page than I used in this history, and you may browse the albums in that page to get a fuller sense of what the meme wave was like. For the fullest sense, of course, you would have to have been in the right meme circles at the time.