innere Arbeit

Here's a theory to help explain some online discourse of emotional suppression that could be behind certain meme-ing behaviors or neurodivergence, in the sense of articulating emotions that might arise from different parts of memes.

Pepe = the stunted inner child, stuck at a kindergarten-like emotional level, innocent and vulnerable but largely unable to articulate what's wrong using complex emotional language, just knows it's sad or something with some body language.

Wojak = the adult mask, the societal script-following shell that's supposed to have it all figured out but is actually just as lost, ,wondering "I did everything I was supposed to do, why do I feel like garbage?"

When they're combined in memes, it's literally the adult self staring at its own emotional stun,ting going "what the hell happened to me?" The bland, mask-like appearance of Wojak is perfect because that's precisely what following societal scripts does: it turns you into this generic, hollow version of a person.

And the reason these memes exploded across the internet is that many are seeing this split. They see Pepe and think, "Oh wow, that feels like my emotional state," and they see Wojak and think, "Oh damn, is that what I look like to the world?"

It's as if the internet has figured out how to express the fundamental disconnect between their inner emotional reality (confused, sad, stunted, etc.) and their outer social performance (bland, conforming, mask-like) through frog and Wojak memes.