About

Kohler is an MS Paint illustration of a man with a smug expression on his face and crossing his arms. It is often used as a reaction image to represent feelings such as disdain, superiority and indifference. Although the original Kohler is a fusion of Apu Apustaja and Poljak, later versions of it display a large variety of looks, being primarily fusions between Apu Apustaja and other meme formats, as well as depicting certain nationalities, characters, people and groups.

Origin

Kohler presumably originated on the /int/ board of the German imageboard Kohlchan, although the original thread could not be discovered. The earliest discovered post of the image was made on the /deutsch/ general thread on the 4chan board /int/ on July 29th, 2021, by an anonymous user (shown below, left).^[1] An anonymous poster who popularized Kohlers on /pol/ hinted on September 6th, 2021 that the character might have originated on the German imageboard Kohlchan via the filenames of the images he posted (shown below, right).^[2] An August 17th, 2021, 2ch^[15] post containing multiple versions of Kohler also confirms this.

Spread

While the original Kohler (shown below, left) has been posted over 180 times in 8 months throughout various 4chan boards,^[3] its far more popular variant is a fusion between the original Apu Apustaja with crossed arms and the Yes Chad meme (shown below, right), which has been posted over 2,200 times in 7 months.^[4]

The Yes Chad Kohler was often associated with the catchphrase "I hate America and Americans" on /pol/, which became in mid to late 2021 a form of bait and spam on the board (examples shown, below).^{[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]}

The spam made numerous 4chan users develop a liking towards the character, and subsequently, they started creating Kohlers of their own. On August 23rd, 2021, a Canadian Kohler was posted on /pol/ (shown below, left).^[13] On December 6th, 2021, an Ukrainian Kohler was posted on /int/ (shown below, right).^[14]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References