Inglip

About

Inglip is an Internet folklore and the nickname of a hooded rage comic character who can communicate with mythical acolytes known as Gropagas through the medium of reCAPTCHA images. Due to its absolute reliance on randomly generated words for narrative context, subject topics may range from simple commands and instructions to far more obscure and highly improvised dialogues based on made-up English words.

Origin

The name “Inglip” stems from a randomly generated reCAPTCHA image that read “Inglip Summoned,” which was then turned into a popular CAPTCHAart comic strip. On January 8th, 2011, a Reddit^[1] user posted a Rage comic strip entitled “Dark Captcha magic” featuring a CAPTCHA caption which read “Inglip summoned.”

The concept of summoning spirits and communicating with otherworldly underlings via CAPTCHA caught on with other Redditors in the f7u12 subreddit^[2] and after several more iterations, it quickly developed into a full-fledged cult with an elaborate story about Inglip and his Holy Grail to establish his kingdom “Trathira” on Earth.

Spread

Followers of Inglip began calling themselves “Gropagas” and embraced the mock religion “Dectrip”, both of which are randomly generated words from CAPTCHAs.

According to an account provided by KYM researcher memeasaurus:

A hapless web surfer is confronted with a captcha. That captcha contains a secret message, a command from beyond. The dark lord Inglip speaks through the mysteries of the captcha and his faithful followers, [known as] the Gropagas, do his bidding.

On Reddit, the series led to creation of the Inglip subreddit^[3] and Inglipnomicon compendium^[4], as well as an entire Wikia project^[5] dedicated to documenting the online folklore surrounding Inglip. The Inglip comic series has been since picked up by various Internet blogs like MemeBase^[6], BuzzFeed^[7] and Urlesque^[8], not to mention it has spawned several single serving sites and Inglip-specific blogs like Inglips.com^[9], The Church of Inglip^[10] and InglipTold.Us^[11] Comic Generator among others.

Notable Examples

The Chronicles of Lord Inglip

Inglip comics have been also turned into a series of short narratives by YouTuber sweederlander^[12], who began uploading videos entitled “The Chronicles of Lord Inglip” in February 2011.

Derivative: OMG Rage Face

With Inglip’s sudden rise in popularity, another face drawing of a surprised Gropagas from the comic series soon became known as “OMG Rage Face”:OMG Rage Face. The original “OMG Rage Face” comes from two separate 2010 comic strips, one about PS3 gaming that can be found in the OMG Rage Face entry and the other one about raisin cookies.

Search Interest

Google Insights graph reveals that search queries for the keyword “Inglip” skyrocketed in the first week of January 2011, eclipsing with the post date of the original Inglip image on Reddit.

External References