Are You Serious Face Seriously

2011reaction imageclassic

Are You Serious Face Seriously is a black-and-white rage comic drawing of a perplexed man or woman, labeled 'Seriously?', used as a reaction to overwhelming ignorance or stupidity. The male version was traced from a January 2011 Fox News moment and posted to Reddit that same month, quickly becoming a standard face in the rage comic vocabulary.

Overview

Are You Serious Face Seriously is a black-and-white rage comic drawing of a perplexed person with a furrowed brow and slightly open mouth1. Also called 'Seriously?', the face is used as a reaction to overwhelming ignorance or stupidity, typically in the final panel of a rage comic strip4.

There are two standard versions of the face, one male and one female, both drawn in the rough sketchy style shared by other rage comic staples1. Comic makers use the face as a wordless reaction, though some edits pair the drawing with 'Seriously?' text underneath5.

How It Spread

The face spread through Memebase's Rage Builder tool, where it sat in the face drop-down menu under the label 'Seriously?'5. That gave casual users a way to drop it into their own single-panel and multi-panel rage comics without any drawing skill of their own.

A female version was posted to Reddit on February 17, 2011, then went through several collaborative revisions in the community before settling on a final design1. An evolution image documenting the revision history was posted two days later on February 19, 20114.

The face made an unusual jump from screen to physical space when its real-world source embraced it. On June 27, 2011, The Friendly Atheist blog reported that David Silverman3 had stuck a large printout of the rage face on the front door of the American Atheists office in Cranford, New Jersey2.

How to Use This Meme

The face typically closes a rage comic as the reader-avatar's reaction to something absurd said or done by another character. Common convention is to leave the drawing unlabeled and let the expression do the work, though some strips add 'Seriously?' text below1.

Frequently Asked Questions