deviantART gallery of artworks titled asdfasdf

Asdf

2006catchphraseclassic

Published August 15, 2026

Asdf is the four-letter string typed by mashing the left-hand home row of a QWERTY keyboard, used online since the mid-2000s as shorthand for anger, boredom, or wordless excitement. The typing habit was defined on Urban Dictionary in August 2006 and later inspired TomSka's popular ASDFmovie animated series.

internet slang origin memes urban dictionary memes frustration memes early internet memes forum era memes

Overview

Asdf is what you get when a left hand slaps the home row of a QWERTY keyboard without thinking. Online, those four letters are typed as a stand-in for an emotion the writer cannot be bothered to spell out, covering anger, joy, distress, or plain boredom1. The style is often called keyboard vomit and treated as a text cousin of grawlix, the symbol strings comic artist Mort Walker coined in 1964 to stand in for cartoon swearing2.

The letters land where they do for a mechanical reason. On a QWERTY layout the left-hand rest position covers a, s, d and f, so a user whose right hand is on the mouse can fire off an outburst without moving3. Variants like asdfasdf, asdfjkl and fghfgsdfs come from the same reflex, with AZERTY users producing qsdf instead3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Usenet / Urban Dictionary (viral spread)
Date
2006

Mashing the home row as filler text is older than the meme itself. Google Groups archives show programmers dropping strings like asdf into posts as system test input as early as November 19954. The jump from placeholder to emotional shorthand is dated by Urban Dictionary, where an August 1, 2006 entry defined asdfasdf as signifying distress, anger, amazement, joy, disbelief, confusion, dumbfoundedness, fear and despair, listing asdfjkl, asdffda and ;alsfkdj as siblings5.

No single author owns the usage, since keyboard-slap posts appeared independently across forums and IM clients. What the 2006 Urban Dictionary entry did was catalogue the practice and give newcomers a name for it5.

How It Spread

By 2009 the string had shifted from generic filler to a specific mood signal, most often boredom or the low-grade anxiety of waiting for something to happen6. Users on Tumblr and early Twitter tagged posts with asdfasdf to mark that kind of wordless reaction, and Urban Dictionary added follow-up entries defining longer strings like asdfasdfasdf the same way6.

In September 2010 asdfasdf climbed onto Google's Hot Searches list without an obvious cause, prompting Dictionary.com to publish a Hot Word column asking readers to help explain the spike7. Around the same period, mutations of the string turned up as deviantART titles and Tumblr tags, cementing the pattern outside chat and forum contexts3.

The biggest cultural offshoot arrived in August 2008 when British animator TomSka launched ASDFmovie, a Flash series of short stick-figure skits named after the keyboard string3. The first installment was uploaded to YouTube on August 10, 2008 and the sequels grew into one of YouTube's longest-running animated comedy franchises8.

How to Use This Meme

Typing asdf or a longer run like asdfasdfasdf is the whole format. It typically shows up mid-conversation as a reply to something exciting, infuriating or overwhelming, standing in for a reaction the writer does not want to articulate5. Common variants swap in adjacent home-row letters (asdfjkl, fghds), repeat the sequence for emphasis, or sprinkle in punctuation like ;alsfkdj to widen the flail5.

Frequently Asked Questions