Me Gusta

Sometimes the most influential cultural artifacts emerge from the most mundane circumstances, and "Me Gusta" exemplifies this phenomenon perfectly. This grotesquely expressive rage comic face became the internet's definitive symbol for awkward, guilty, or perverse pleasure—all conceived and executed in a mere fifteen minutes.

The colloquial Spanish phrase "me gusta" was first adopted into a Rage Comic drawing by illustrator May Oswald (formerly known as Matt), who uploaded her artwork to 4chan and Reddit on March 18th, 2010 (Know Your Meme, 2010). The drawing was also uploaded to her personal Tumblr blog and DeviantART account on the same day. Oswald drew and uploaded Me Gusta to the message board 4chan at the behest of a friend—all in a 15-minute span (Daily Dot, 2021).

The caption "me gusta" translates to "I like it" in Spanish, but the meme's power lay not in linguistic accuracy but in its visual representation of uncomfortable satisfaction. In its beginning, the phrase conveyed an odd sense of pleasure in sexually perverse contexts, but the meaning has since broadened to describe a more general state of being disturbed and/or pleased at the same time (Know Your Meme, 2010).

What made "Me Gusta" particularly successful was Oswald's strategic approach to viral dissemination. During Know Your Meme's interview with Oswald on May 6th, 2021, she revealed that the original post to 4chan was a carefully constructed effort to get the meme to go viral, which she accomplished by posting examples of the face in memes from various accounts and IP addresses. Oswald explained her strategy: "Oftentimes, when a new Rage Face was coming out in 4chan at that time, how the thread would happen is that there would just be the face, and then with the colorful language of 4chan, there would be the equivalent of, 'Hey, new Rage Face just dropped. See what you guys can make of it.' So my intention was to do the exact same thing, 'Hey, new Rage Face just dropped.' Post the image. But what I came in with was that I had made about two or three example comics to kind of get it out there with sort of what I was intending this face to be used for."

The first meme featuring Me Gusta after Oswald's initial post to 4chan used the character in a four-panel comic with a cat reacting to being pet, which Oswald revealed established the template for the character's usage. This initial example perfectly captured the meme's essence: taking an innocent situation and imbuing it with an air of uncomfortable satisfaction through the distinctive facial expression.

The meme's viral trajectory accelerated rapidly throughout 2010. Oswald eventually revealed herself as the creator of the Me Gusta face in a Reddit thread, as well as an Ask Me Anything (AMA) thread on March 8th, 2011. By this time, the meme had achieved significant cultural penetration across multiple platforms.

In December 2010, the single topic blog Me Gusta Face was launched to curate the growing collection of comics. As of May 2012, the series ranked in the "Fuck Yeah" tier on Memegenerator and thousands of "Me Gusta" rage comics could be found on Tumblr, Memebase and on Reddit's popular F7U12 subreddit (Know Your Meme, 2010). The face, which peaked in popularity on Google Trends in early 2012, demonstrated remarkable staying power in internet culture.

The meme's influence extended beyond its original rage comic format, spawning numerous variations including "No Me Gusta" (expressing awkward dislike) and "Me Gusta Mucho" (showing extreme pleasure). The character even achieved mainstream recognition when the Powerpuff Girls featured a "No Me Gusta" reference in a 2016 Cartoon Network episode.

"Me Gusta" exemplified the collaborative and rapid-fire nature of early 2010s meme culture, where a single facial expression could capture complex emotional states and spread across global digital communities within days. The meme's success lay in its ability to articulate the inexpressible—that uncomfortable zone between revulsion and attraction that characterizes much of human experience.