Awesome Smiley

About

Awesome Smilies are popular on 4chan, Something Awful, and more.

Credits for research go to video game designer and blogger Chris Ainsworth. His sleuthing is documented on his blog.

According to Ainsworth, he corresponded with the anonymous female who first drew the Awesome Face for the forums of Pokemopols, where it first appeared.

I drew the icon years ago as part of an emoticon set he wanted for their new forum software, and I think he showed you all the other ones that were designed along with it. I’m not really sure what exactly I wanted it to represent but I think the ‘ridiculous childish glee’ that it now signifies is probably close!

I’m also a member at Something Awful and the first time I saw it posted I did a double take… I even remember my mind racing as to why and HOW someone had picked up a crappy lil’ icon off a tiny website, and I’m still not sure to this day… I assume a Pokemopolis member posted it on 4Chan. At that point I thought its posting would be a one time thing, but then I saw it more and more. It got to the point where I couldn’t read SA because everytime I saw it I’d just be completely freaked out, and naturally I came to hate it! I hoped every day that it would become bannable to post it, but the next best thing was replacing the VBCode. I also posted in BYOB in a thread Whalley made saying that I had made the icon originally, trying to get him to divulge where he had gotten it from. Most of SA assumed it was a ‘BYOB thing’ which was probably good because they’d probably want to lynch me if they actually knew where it was from.

An entire set of Awesome Smiley emoticons is available here.

This thread from January 7th, 2007 documents the significance of Awesome Face and it’s viral popularity within the Someting Awful community.

Online retail site Zazzle.com offers a wide range of “Awesome Smiley” merchandise created by a number of different sellers.