Trollface

Origin

Trollface comes from an MS Paint webcomic that Carlos Ramirez, a cartoonist based in Oakland, California, posted to deviantART on 19 September 2008 under the handle Whynne. The comic was about how pointless trolling on 4chan’s video game board (/v/) really is, and the face in question was only one panel of it. Ramirez added a note to the post saying he had been trying to draw a character called the “Rape Rodent” — in other words, the use it is famous for was never the artist’s intent.

The drawing quickly hardened into a universal emoticon for “internet troll” on 4chan. For a while it was called “coolface,” and it became a fixture of the rage-comic strips circulating between 4chan and Ebaumsworld. By 2009 it had taken over Reddit’s rage-comic subreddit r/f7u12 and spread to Tumblr, Cheezburger and meme generator sites.

The copyright fight

This is where Trollface parts ways with other early memes. Ramirez registered the image with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2010. In July 2011 he emailed Reddit demanding that r/f7u12 be taken down for infringement. In March 2015 a DMCA notice from him pulled the game Meme Run from Nintendo’s Wii U eShop.

The money was real. Kotaku reported in 2015 that he had earned more than $100,000 in licensing fees, peaking at around $15,000 a month. In September 2025 he granted exclusive IP rights to a Solana-based $TROLL token in a six-figure deal. It is a rare case of an anonymous doodle being managed as registered property, and a demonstration that the folk assumption “memes belong to everyone” does not necessarily hold up in law.

How it is used

You use it when you have deliberately wound someone up and are not hiding it. The classic form pairs the face with “Problem?” or “U mad?”

• Admitting a post was bait by tacking the face on at the end
• Exploiting a loophole in the rules and then playing innocent
• Slapping it on a victory screen after taunting an opponent in a game

It was treated as a dated meme for much of the late 2010s, but returned through the realistically redrawn “realistic trollface” and the creepypasta-flavoured variant “Trollge.” Because the original is a bare line drawing, it stays recognisable in any art style, which makes it unusually easy to recycle.

Sources

• Know Your Meme, entry “Trollface” — the 19 September 2008 deviantART post, artist Carlos Ramirez (Whynne), the “Rape Rodent” note, the 2010 copyright registration, the July 2011 demand to Reddit over r/f7u12, the March 2015 Meme Run DMCA, Kotaku’s reporting on licensing income, and the September 2025 $TROLL token deal