LOL Meme
The lol meme is the rage comic face called LOL Guy: a lopsided white head with one bulging eye and a jaw stretched wide open, used to caption the moment something is so stupid that you laugh instead of arguing with it.
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Where the lol meme comes from
This page has to answer two different questions, because people typing lol meme are asking two different things. Some want the history of the word. Some want the drawing that meme libraries file under the name. The word is well documented. The drawing is not, and this page says so rather than inventing a date.
The word
LOL stands for laughing out loud. The earliest recorded use in that sense that lexicographers accept appears in the 8 May 1989 issue of FidoNews, an electronic newsletter for the FidoNet bulletin board network; the citation is used by the Oxford English Dictionary and by the linguist Ben Zimmer. There is an older claim: Wayne Pearson has said he coined it in the early to mid 1980s in a pre web chat system called Viewline, replying to a friend who had made him laugh. No written record of that exchange has been found and the exact date is unknown, so it stands as a claim rather than as evidence.
The Oxford English Dictionary formally added LOL on 24 March 2011, and in doing so turned up something better than the coinage story: the earliest recorded use of the letters LOL as an initialism is from the 1960s, where they stood for little old lady. The modern meaning did not descend from that; it simply reused the letters.
Meaning has drifted a very long way since. LOL now rarely reports laughter at all. Linguists treat it as a pragmatic particle, a small marker that lightens a sentence, signals that something is not to be taken straight, or softens a request. That drift is the reason the derisive drawing, rather than a picture of somebody actually enjoying themselves, is what the template library ended up with.
The face
Rage comics started on the 4chan random board in mid 2008. The first one was a plain four panel strip about a bathroom mishap ending in the zoomed in Rage Guy face and a long string of letters. Trollface, drawn by Carlos Ramirez, also dates from 2008. The whole family peaked hard: Google Trends puts the high water mark for rage guy, rage comics and troll face at February 2012, after which the style collapsed.
LOL Guy belongs to that family by style and by era. It is the same MS Paint line work, the same asymmetric skull, the same crowd of imitators. What it does not have is a citation. The encyclopedic write ups of rage comics name Rage Guy, Trollface and the Y U NO guy and stop there; LOL Guy is not among them. Treat the drawing as a convention that emerged inside the rage comic boom rather than as an artefact with an author and a date.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1960s | The letters LOL are already in print, standing for little old lady. Unrelated to the modern sense. |
| Early to mid 1980s | Wayne Pearson claims to have coined LOL on the Viewline chat system. No written record survives. |
| 8 May 1989 | The earliest accepted citation for LOL meaning laughing out loud, in the FidoNews newsletter. |
| Mid 2008 | Rage comics begin on the 4chan random board with the first Rage Guy strip. Trollface is drawn the same year. |
| 24 March 2011 | The Oxford English Dictionary adds LOL. |
| February 2012 | Peak search interest for rage comics and rage faces. The style declines from here. |
What it means and when to use it
The face is not happy. That is the single most useful thing to know about it. A genuinely funny thing gets a crying laughing emoji or a plain reply. This drawing is for the other kind of laugh, the one that comes out when a situation is so badly constructed that laughing is cheaper than complaining. It is closer to a shrug with teeth than to delight.
| Element | Literal reading | How it is actually used |
|---|---|---|
| The open mouth | Laughing. | Laughing at, not laughing with. The template is aimed at something absurd, usually something institutional. |
| The uneven eyes | Bad drawing. | Deliberate. The crudeness is the point and cleaning it up kills it. |
| Black and white line art | A style choice. | An era marker. It dates the post to the rage comic period on purpose, the way a grainy filter does. |
| Posting it about your own mistake | Self deprecation. | Correct use, and the safest. Absurdity you caused is the easiest kind to laugh at. |
| Posting it about a person | A joke. | Risky. Without a system or a situation to aim at, it reads as mockery of an individual. |
| Writing lol in the caption | Reinforcement. | Redundant. The face already says it, and the word now means almost nothing on its own. |
Captions that work
Two text boxes. Box one sets up a situation that sounds normal. Box two delivers the detail that makes it ridiculous. Keep box two short; the face is doing the reacting, so the words only have to supply the absurdity.
- workRewrote the whole service to make it faster It is now slower
- workSupport says the outage was caused by scheduled maintenance The maintenance was scheduled to prevent outages
- Printer says there is a paper jam There is no paper in the printer
- relatableWatched a two hour video about beating procrastination Instead of doing the thing
- Opened the group chat after eleven hours away Forty seven messages about where to eat and nobody has eaten
- schoolAsked if anyone had started the essay yet Twelve people said no in twelve different ways
- relatableBought a planner to get organised Found it unopened while getting organised
- internetUpdate notes say bug fixes and stability improvements It is the same bug and it is worse
- cookingRecipe says one medium onion The onion is the size of a football
- healthGym induction asked what my fitness goal was I said stairs
Variants and close relatives
| Format | Source | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| Rage Guy | 4chan random board, mid 2008 | The original rage face. Fury rather than laughter, and it closes a strip instead of standing alone. |
| Trollface | Drawn by Carlos Ramirez, 2008 | A smirk, not a laugh. It marks the person who caused the mess, not the person watching it. |
| Y U NO guy | Rage comic family | Demands an explanation. LOL Guy has stopped asking for one. |
| Crying laughing emoji | Unicode | What most people actually send. Warmer, sincerer and with no era attached. |
| lmao, lmfao, lolol | Text, not images | Escalations of the same word. All of them have drifted away from literal laughter. |
| Full rage comic strips | Peak February 2012 | Multi panel stories that end on a face. This template is the last panel used on its own. |
Common mistakes
- Using it for something genuinely funny. The face is derisive. Put it under a friend joke and it reads as mocking them.
- Writing lol in the text boxes. The drawing is already the word. Saying it twice makes the caption sound like it is explaining itself.
- Assuming it reads as current. Rage faces peaked in February 2012. Posting one now is a period reference and it will be read as one.
- Long setups. Three lines of context in box one drains all the surprise out of box two.
- Aiming it at a person rather than a situation. Systems, policies and software make good targets. Named individuals do not.
- Treating LOL as proof of laughter. In practice it now softens a sentence far more often than it reports amusement, which is worth remembering before reading tone into somebody else’s message.
Limits and etiquette
Be straight about the state of this format. Rage faces are a period style. Their measurable peak was February 2012 and everything since has been either nostalgia or irony. That is not fatal, because deliberately retro formats still work when the joke is small and the audience is in on it, but nobody is going to find this drawing fresh. If you want a laugh reaction that reads as current, an emoji or a video clip will do better.
The attribution problem is worth repeating too, because most template sites quietly skip it. LOL Guy has no known author, no known first posting and no rights holder anyone has identified. That is genuinely different from a template lifted from a film or a photograph, and it is why the confidence rating on this page is low rather than high. If you find primary evidence of who drew it and when, that evidence should replace this section rather than sit beside it.
The template frame reproduced here is third-party material, hosted for captioning only; rights holders can use the takedown policy at /dmca/.
Frequently asked questions
What does LOL actually stand for?
Laughing out loud. The earliest accepted citation in that sense is in the FidoNews newsletter dated 8 May 1989.
Is there one official lol meme image?
No. LOL is a word rather than a picture. Template libraries settle on a rage comic drawing called LOL Guy, but no first posting or author for that drawing has been documented.
Who invented the word LOL?
Wayne Pearson has said he coined it in the early to mid 1980s on a chat system called Viewline. No written record of that exchange survives, so the claim is unproven.
When did the dictionary add LOL?
The Oxford English Dictionary added it on 24 March 2011. It also noted that the same three letters appeared in the 1960s meaning little old lady.
What kind of meme is the LOL Guy drawing?
It is a rage face. Rage comics began on the 4chan random board in mid 2008 and search interest for the style peaked in February 2012.
How many text boxes does the lol template have?
Two. Box one sets up a normal sounding situation and box two supplies the detail that makes it ridiculous.
Does LOL still mean someone is laughing?
Usually not. Linguists describe it as a marker that softens a sentence or flags that it is not meant straight, rather than a report of actual laughter.
Is the lol rage face dated?
Yes. It is a period style from the rage comic years, so posting one now reads as a deliberate throwback rather than as a current reaction.