Anonymouse is a visual and verbal pun that merges the word 'anonymous' with 'mouse,' most recognizable from a 2011 illustration of a masked rodent by artist David Aja.

Where did Anonymouse come from?

The image was first posted by David Aja to Twitpic on June 12th, 2011, before being reblogged onto Tumblr the following week.

What does Anonymouse mean?

The word is used as a joking substitute for 'anonymous,' referring to an unseen rodent, a public-computer mouse, or simply an unidentified person.

How do you use Anonymouse?

People use it either as a caption on pictures of mice or as a word swap in text where 'anonymous' would normally go.

Is Anonymouse still popular?

It sits in the long tail of internet wordplay, still surfacing occasionally in slang and comment threads rather than trending, per its Know Your Meme entry.

Anonymouse

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Published August 15, 2026

Anonymouse is an image and wordplay meme that puns on the word 'anonymous' by combining it with 'mouse,' originating from a June 2011 illustration by comic artist David Aja. The pun spread across humor blogs and also lives as internet slang for any unidentified user or rodent.

pun memes portmanteau memes animal memes webcomic memes early 2010s memes

Overview

Anonymouse is an image and word-swap joke that fuses 'anonymous' with 'mouse,' usually pictured as a small rodent styled after the visual identity of the Anonymous collective1. The gag works on two levels at once, the shared syllable and the visual of a tiny masked animal, so it lands without any caption needed3.

The word exists apart from the picture too. Urban Dictionary catalogs several parallel definitions, from an unidentified rodent hiding behind furniture to a computer mouse on a shared public terminal4. Both threads, the illustration and the slang, keep the joke alive as short-form internet humor.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitpic (creation) / Tumblr (spread)

Creator

David Aja

Date

2011

Comic artist David Aja posted the original Anonymouse illustration to Twitpic on June 12th, 20111. The drawing places a cartoon mouse in the visual costume associated with the Anonymous hacktivist collective, which was drawing heavy press coverage that year3.

How It Spread

Six days after the initial upload, on June 18th, 2011, the image was reblogged through a Tumblr account linked to Laughing Squid, giving it a much larger audience than the original Twitpic post2. From there it moved through art and humor blogs, where the picture and the pun started travelling separately.

The slang side of Anonymouse predates Aja's drawing. Entries on Urban Dictionary already recorded the word as a joking substitution for 'anonymous,' used to describe unseen rodents or shared computer peripherals4. Aja's image gave that existing pun a concrete mascot, which is what pushed the word into wider circulation on blog networks3.

How to Use This Meme

The Anonymouse joke typically shows up in one of two forms, a picture of a mouse wearing a mask or hood, or a text swap where someone writes 'anonymouse' in place of 'anonymous' for a quick pun4. It's often used as a caption on rodent photos or as a throwaway line in comment threads about hidden identities.