The World is a Cruel and Unjust Place

About

The World is a Cruel and Unjust Place refers to a Wojak comic format in which a sad, depressed Wojak expresses their nihilistic view on the world by saying “The world is a cruel and unjust place. There is no harmony in the universe. The only constant is suffering” in the first panel, followed by a 180 when they see something added to the second panel below that makes them blush in excitement. The format was popularized in 2020, spreading to most major formats in 2021.

Origin

The earliest known instance of this meme appearing online comes from a post by the Facebook^[1] account Aborted Dreams on August 22nd, 2020. In the meme, Wojak reacts happily to seeing a dog photoshopped into the second frame, forgetting about his previous woes (shown below). The meme received over 3,800 likes, 2,700 shares and 260 comments in roughly 10 months.

Spread

The format continued to spread in 2020 but saw more widespread adoption in 2021 as it spread to other sites and platforms. On March 20th, 2021, Redditor undead_and_unfunny posted another example of Wojak reacting to the Portal soundtrack on the /r/Portal^[2] subreddit, receiving over 1,600 upvotes in two months (seen below, left). On May 5th, Redditor LewisRMJ posted a variant reacting to a duck on the /r/me_irl^[3] sub, receiving over 13,600 upvotes in roughly one month (seen below, right).

On June 3rd, 2021, the Instagram^[4] account matthew.niverse uploaded a video version of the meme, accumulating over 200,000 views and 24,000 likes in six days (shown below).

On June 6th, 2021, Twitter^[5] user TheF1amethr0wer tweeted a version edited to include characters from Team Fortress 2, receiving over 50,700 likes and 7,900 retweets in three days (seen below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References