Wew Lad

About

“Wew Lad” is an obfuscatory expression associated with circle jerking or shitposting, which is often accompanied by a poorly-drawn illustration of a man’s face known as the “Wrinkle Face” or a digitally altered picture of the Doge Shiba Inu.

Origin

On December 14th, 2012, the network security blog SecurityMatters^[3] reported that a 13-year-old student from Philippines was murdered for replying to a Facebook post with the word “wew.” The earliest known use of the phrase “wew lad” was submitted in a thread on 4chan’s [s4s]^[1] (shit 4chan says) board on December 14th, 2013.

Spread

On May 29th, 2014, the single serving site Wew Lad^[2] was launched, featuring a photoshopped picture of Doge with an animated Wrinkle Face character^[5] spinning in the center and a remix of the theme song from the television show Hawaii Five-0 playing in the background. On January 21st, 2015, Redditor mememaster420xx submitted the page to the /r/FreshMemes^[4] subreddit.

On March 31st, a post featuring an illustration of the toast man’s face along with the description “wew lad is 4chan’s newest meme” was submitted to /s4s/ (shown below). On the following day, World of Warcraft Forums^[4] member Amberly submitted a thread titled “wew lad.”

Search Interest

External References