About

Why Do You Always Wear That Mask? refers to a 2016 webcomic by Shen Comix. In the comic, Shen asks a person wearing a mask that reads "ANGER," "Hey Anger, why do you always wear that mask?" He then lifts the mask off the person's face, revealing the word "SADNESS." Shen puts the mask back down, deciding it's better that way.

Origin

On July 25th, 2016, Shen Comix posted the untitled comic to his Twitter^[2] account, where it gained over 15,900 likes and 13,400 retweets in roughly 4 years (shown below). He later uploaded it to his Instagram^[1] on August 28th, garnering 49,900 likes in a comparable span of time.

Spread

People began using the comic as an exploitable meme format shortly after publication. On October 4th, 2016, The Sad Pad posted an exploited version of the comic to their Facebook^[3] page, replacing "anger" with "memes" and "sadness" with "crippling depression" garnering over 22,000 shares and 11,000 reactions in roughly 4 years (shown below, left). On October 16th, Crippling Things uploaded a version replacing the mask and revealed face with emojis to Facebook,^[4] garnering over 6,700 reactions in a comparable span of time (shown below, right).

On December 19th, 2019, u/PantsRequired posted a version of the comic to /r/bioniclememes,^[5] garnering over 2,000 upvotes in a year (shown below).

On October 25th, 2020, u/KLASHINOV posted a new version of the comic to /r/memes,^[6] garnering over 62,500 upvotes in just under 3 months (shown below, left). On November 18th, 2020, u/Synapse_Snaps posted a version of the comic accusing the company Nestle of using child labor to /r/memes,^[7] garnering over 59,000 upvotes in just under 2 months (shown below, right).

Template

Various Examples

Search Interest

N/A

External References