About

"Oh God Why" is a rage comic character with a half-shaded face accompanied by the remorseful expression “Oh God Why." It is often used as the final panel in a comic that tells a horrifying, disturbing or embarrassing childhood story.

Origin

A compilation of "Oh God Why" rage comics was posted to FunnyJunk^[1] by user Diamondhead^[2] on July 23rd, 2011. The post has received 99,167 views and 7407 up votes as of November 4th, 2011. Diamondhead claimed to be the creator of the "Oh God Why" character on his FunnyJunk profile page and revealed that he contributes to Reddit^[3] under the username "ozzymustaine."

Spread

Diamondhead posted the first "Oh God Why" comic to Reddit in a thread titled "I wanted to fuck [Embarrassing memory]" on October 17th, 2011. The post reached the front page of the f7u12 subreddit, and has accumulated 6,349 up votes as of November 4th, 2011. Additional rage comics featuring the "Oh God Why" character were subsequently posted by other Reddit^[6][7][8] users that week.

The domain for the single topic blog "Oh God Why"^[10] was registered on December 4th, 2011. Derivatives have since spread to Tumblr under the tag "#oh god why"^[11] and several pages worth of merchandise is available at the online retailer Zazzle.^[12]

Historical Comics

On December 7th, 2011, a rage comic using the "Oh God Why" face about the United States reaction to the Pearl Harbor attack during World War II was posted to the r/historicalrage^[13] subreddit. On December 17th, a comic about the 1804 United States purchase of the territory of Louisiana from France was posted to the f7u12^[14] subreddit and reached the front page accumulating over 6,500 up votes within 4 days. The following day, a comic about the 1867 United States purchase of Alaska from Russia was posted to the /r/historicalrage^[15] subreddit.

Notable Examples

Search

Search queries for "oh god why" began climbing rapidly in October of 2011, the same month the comics were first submitted to the f7u12 subreddit.

External References