Big Brain Wojak

About

Big Brain Wojak is a character variant of the Wojak meme depicted with an exaggerated brain and head that surpasses the limits of his skull, often turning into various objects and other entities ranging from a chair or a hot air balloon to an elephant and other animals. The memes featuring the big-brained character are typically used to illustrate posts and moments that showcase massive intelligence, often in an ironically overblown way. The humorously massive-brained Wojak is also the opposite of the Brainlet variant of the character.

Origin

The earliest Big Brain Wojak variation traceable online was posted on November 23rd, 2016, to 4chan's /pol/ board (seen below).^[3] It pictures Wojak wearing glasses with an enormous brain elongated into a chair the character is seated in and was used to mock the politics of another poster who seemed oversure of themselves. The original name of the file was notably "intelligence.jpeg."

Around this time, a variety of other Wojak variations took root in the memescape online. The earliest examples of Big Brain Wojak's thematic opposite, Brainlet, which is used to describe small-brained views, date from the summer of 2016.

More postings of Big Brain Wojak images subsequently found their way around 4chan and Reddit in December 2016,^[2] and by January 2017, a variety of variations on the theme existed, including Wojaks fighting, flying and having sex with their own brains.

Spread

The earliest trace of the format on Twitter^[4] was posted by user @Matt_D_Cohen on February 10th, 2017, earning almost 140 likes in six years (seen below). The tweet depicts several variations of the Big Brain Wojak format, showing its combination with the whomst meme and mocks people that the poster seems to believe are pretentious similar to many other Big Brain Wojak memes.

On February 13th, 2017, an article titled "Whomst Is The Smartest On 4chan?" was written for Intelligencer (a product of New York Magazine) about Big Brain Wojak, indicating that by then the meme had become solidly cemented in public discourse.^[1]

Related Memes

TFW Too Intelligent

TFW Too Intelligent sometimes written "tfw to intelligent," is an abbreviation for “that feeling [I get] when [I am] too intelligent,” which is used on 4chan to mock those who express feelings of superiority for subscribing to various ideologies and beliefs. The catchphrase is often associated with edited pictures of various characters, including Wojak and Pepe the Frog. It is particularly associated with Big Brain Wojak.

Various Examples

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External References