Do you love the Internet but have no idea what people are talking about when you go online? Never fear, Gamma Squad is here to help guide you through the sea of all caps, enraged geek commentary.
Artist Wednesday Wolf has created a number of wicked watercolors of popular Internet characters. Take a peek through the gallery and we’ll explain any reference you fail to get.
Forever Alone is a popular character in Rage Comics. Rage Comics are normally made anonymously and are stories typically told using standardized images to represent emotions and transitions. You can make your own Rage Comics using memebase.
Image by Wednesday Wolf
“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” is an award winning, three part, 45 minute long musical web series made by many of the Internet’s favorite people during the Writer’s Guild strike in 2008. The show was written by Joss Whedon, of “Buffy” and “Firefly” fame, along with his brothers and wife and starred Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day (from “The Guild”) and Nathan Fillion. The series followed the exploits of Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris) as he tries to win the girl of his dreams and pull off a crime that will get him into the Evil League of Evil.
Image by Wednesday Wolf
The Oatmeal is one of the most popular webcomics out there. It’s known for making infographs, lists and comics commenting on social media. Its success and popularity was due in no small part to wild enthusiasm from readers on Digg, Stumble Upon and Reddit.
Image by Wednesday Wolf
Pedobear is the Internet’s favorite pedophile. It originated on the dark, anonymous message board 4Chan and is used to mock someone who is being creepy about a kid. Part of the humor comes from Pedobear looking like an innocent cartoon bear, here he looks much more disturbing.
Image by Wednesday Wolf
This is an Alot and it comes from one of the most popular webcomics of all time. An Alot is an imaginary creature that is created when someone combines “a” and “lot” into alot, changing the nature of the sentence.
Image by Wednesday Wolf
Wednesday Wolf calls this DinoThor, but I like the name Thorasaurus more. This painting is almost certainly inspired by the Dinosaur Superheroes the Avengersaurs created by artist David Resto.
Image by Wednesday Wolf
Fuuu is another popular Rage Comics character. He is used to describe unimaginable rage, normally as a result of dealing with an idiot or an a-hole.
Image by Wednesday Wolf
Me Gusta is another popular Rage Comic character. From the Spanish phrase “it gives me pleasure,” Me Gusta is typically used to express ironically liking something that you’d expect to cause disgust.
Image by Wednesday Wolf
Tumblrbeast was designed by The Oatmeal to serve the same function as the Twitter Fail Whale. He is a monster that would appear when trying to get on Tumblr when the site is down, which is frequently.
Image by Wednesday Wolf
This is a Reddit up vote icon, normally it doesn’t have people nailed to it. Reddit describes itself as the front page of the Internet, which is a pretty arrogant thing to say, but in many ways is true. Reddit’s moderator plus up vote system and spam filter keeps out much of the low quality content that plagued Digg and gives it a superior speed compared to most other social networks. If you submit content to Reddit, you live and die by the up vote.
Image by Wednesday Wolf
This is a Reddit alien, the logo of Reddit. Reddit is divided into subreddits based on categories and for each category a small modified Reddit alien appears at the top of the page. For example, the Star Trek subreddit has a Vulcan alien. This Reddit alien appears to be living in a tube similar to the containment tube that holds Luke Skywalker after his night out in the snow on Hoth.
Image by Wednesday Wolf