Yiiking Out

About

Yiiking Out refers to a sprite of Yiik: A Postmodern RPG protagonist Alex grabbing his head with two hands and holding his mouth agape as if he is screaming. Popularized by the OneyPlays' playthrough of the game, the sprite was dubbed "yiiking out" on the /r/OneyPlays subreddit and later gained prominence as a reaction and as source material for redraws and remakes. The phrase is also used as the online slang counterpart for "freaking out."

Origin

On January 17th, 2019, indie RPG video game YIIK: A Postmodern RPG was released.^[1] In the game, during dialogues, protagonist Alex occasionally grabs his head with both hands and holds his mouth agape as if screaming in panic (sprite shown below).

On April 2nd, 2021, YouTube^[2] channel OneyPlays started a 30-episode playthrough of YIIK, often making fun of the sprite when it would appear in seemingly inappropriate situations when such overreaction would hardly be warranted (clips from episodes two and four of the playthrough shown below).

AAAAAH! THIS PLACE IS THE BOMB! AAAAH! THERE'S A BOMB! FIRE! FIRE! EVERYBODY RUN!

During the run of the playthrough, the sprite became an in-joke within OneyPlays' community. On June 9th, 2021, Redditor^[3] Aperture_Mann made the first notable post that referred to the pose as "yiiking out" which gained over 980 upvotes in the /r/OneyPlays subreddit in 10 months (shown below).

Spread

Through 2021, the /r/OneyPlays subreddit created multiple posts about the pose, with the name "yiiking out," a portmanteau of "YIIK" and "freaking out," becoming cemented. For example, on August 21st, 2021, Redditor^[4] kleppy123 posted an edited image of the sprites, captioning it, "Alex yiiking himself." The post (shown below, left) gained over 1,400 upvotes in seven months. On October 19th, 2021, Redditor^[5] Zimtschock shared a Two Soyjaks Pointing template based on the pose (shown below, center). On October 26th, Redditor^[6] p3nny-lane posted a cosplay of the sprite that gained over 2,100 upvotes in five months (shown below, right).

In 2022, the pose achieved recognition outside of the subreddit, being used as a reference for redraws. For example, on February 16th, 2022, Twitter^[7] user @Luminian_ shared a redraw of Reimu Hakurei based on the sprite which gained over 350 retweets and 1,300 likes in one month (shown below, left). On March 22nd, 2022, Twitter^[8] user @ManInBookshelf posted the sprite, captioned, "Draw your OC YIIKing out," starting an artist challenge. The tweet gained over 2,000 retweets and 14,700 likes in four days, with multiple users on Twitter responding with redraws of their OC characters. For example, on March 24th, Tails Gets Trolled author Lazerbot responded^[9] with a redraw of Tails "yiiking out" which gained over 60 retweets and 420 likes in one day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References