# Feels Good Man > Feels Good Man is a 2005 exploitable image macro and catchphrase from cartoonist Matt Furie's indie comic *Boy's Club*, featuring Pepe the Frog using the phrase to explain his urination habit. "Feels Good Man" is a catchphrase and exploitable image macro originating from cartoonist Matt Furie's indie comic *Boy's Club*, in which the character Pepe the Frog explains his habit of pulling his pants all the way down to urinate by simply saying "feels good, man." First posted online around 2005 and spread widely through 4chan and Something Awful starting in 2008, the phrase became one of the earliest and most recognized Pepe-related memes. The catchphrase also lent its name to an award-winning 2020 documentary tracing Pepe's journey from innocent cartoon to political flashpoint and back again. ## Origin Matt Furie created Pepe the Frog as one of four characters in *Boy's Club*, an indie comic series about post-college slacker roommates who spend their time playing video games, eating pizza, and being harmlessly gross[1]. Furie began posting the comics to his MySpace blog in a series of updates around late 2005[2]. The comic was later published in print by Buenaventura Press starting in 2006[6]. The specific bathroom scene had a real-life origin story. Furie's partner Aiyana posed for the drawing: "He said, 'Can you stand over there and kind of make it look like you're pulling your pants down while you're bending over so I can draw you?' So yea, that was my butt… and my toilet"[2]. Furie himself drew the scenario from childhood memory: "When I was younger, me and my cousin David would go to the same school and whenever he would go to the public bathroom he would pull his pants all the way down to pee. Underwear and everything. It seemed like it would feel really good"[2]. In early 2008, someone on 4chan's /b/ board uploaded a scan of the comic page[6]. On February 4th, 2008, Something Awful contributor Jon Hendren (known online as @fart) posted the "Feels Good Man" comic to the site, helping push it into wider circulation[6]. - **Platform:** MySpace (original comic), 4chan / Something Awful (viral spread) - **Creator:** Matt Furie (artist), Jon Hendren (early spreader on Something Awful) - **Date:** 2005 (comic created), 2008 (viral spread) ## Overview "Feels Good Man" centers on a single panel from Matt Furie's *Boy's Club* comic series. The setup: Pepe the Frog is caught urinating with his pants pushed all the way down to his ankles. When his roommate Landwolf questions the habit, Pepe replies with a relaxed "feels good, man"[2]. That final panel, showing Pepe's half-lidded expression and easy grin, was extracted from the comic and turned into a standalone reaction image. The catchphrase took on a life of its own, used across message boards and forums as a shorthand for laid-back satisfaction with any situation, no matter how mundane[6]. The image proved extremely flexible. Users began Photoshopping Pepe's face onto other characters and contexts, creating an exploitable template. The phrase itself detached from the image entirely, popping up as a text-only response in forum threads. An inverted version, "Feels Bad Man," featuring a sad-looking Pepe, appeared in 2009 as a reaction for expressing disappointment[6]. ## How It Spread After hitting 4chan and Something Awful in early 2008, the meme spread fast. Users began extracting Pepe's face from the final panel and Photoshopping it into new contexts, creating an exploitable image macro format[6]. The catchphrase itself became a common forum response, used on message boards to explain one's actions or express casual contentment. Members of bodybuilding communities adopted the phrase to celebrate fitness achievements[2]. Photos of cats, dogs, and random people with "feels good man" text overlaid started appearing across the internet[2]. Furie noticed the spread through a steady stream of emails from people showing him Pepe's face paired with the phrase on different corners of the web. "It was like this big, nerdy thing," he recalled[2]. This was also the first time Furie encountered the word "meme" and understood what it meant[2]. By March 2009, "Feels Good Man" earned its own Urban Dictionary entry[2]. That same year, an edited version with a distraught-looking Pepe and the caption "Feels Bad Man" began circulating as a reaction image on 4chan and the Bodybuilding Forums[6]. During a 2009 Halloween event, Gaia Online incorporated the catchphrase into their storyline manga, with a character called The Overseer using the line after refusing to wear clothes[6]. Furie's personal favorite remixes were the John Goodman edits. "There was like a dog hanging out the window and says 'feels good man,' and another had John Goodman and said 'eels good man.' That was my favorite one I think," Furie told Know Your Meme[6]. Throughout 2008 and into the early 2010s, "Feels Good Man" functioned primarily as a benign, apolitical meme. Arthur Jones, who later directed the documentary about Pepe, described how the frog served as "an innocuous image for people to respond to online, before emojis, before the flexible discourse of text messaging"[8]. Producer Giorgio Angelini noted that a key transformation happened around the 2008 financial crisis, when Pepe shifted from "feels good man" to "feels sad man" as online communities of young men began expressing disillusionment[8]. ## How to Use The classic "Feels Good Man" format is simple: take the panel of Pepe's satisfied expression (or a Photoshopped variation) and pair it with a situation where someone is doing something mildly unusual or indulgent. The catchphrase works as either image text or a standalone reply in comment threads. Common approaches: 1. Post Pepe's grinning face in response to a story about something that brings simple pleasure 2. Photoshop Pepe's face onto another character or animal in a relaxed situation, with "feels good man" as the caption 3. Use the text phrase alone as a forum or chat reply to express casual satisfaction 4. For the inverted "Feels Bad Man" format, pair a sad-looking Pepe with a disappointing situation ## Cultural Impact The phrase "Feels Good Man" launched Pepe the Frog's entire meme career and became the title of a critically acclaimed documentary. Arthur Jones' 2020 film *Feels Good Man* premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker[7]. It later won an Emmy Award in 2021 for Outstanding Research: Documentary[7]. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 95% approval rating based on 81 reviews[7]. Polygon called it "the most important political film of 2020"[7]. The documentary aired on PBS as part of its Independent Lens series and on BBC Four's Storyville in October 2020[7]. It was later added to the FAST service Pluto TV in Canada[11]. The ADL's designation of Pepe as a hate symbol in 2016 made "Feels Good Man" part of a larger conversation about how images can be weaponized online[10]. ADL director Oren Segal clarified that context matters: using Pepe to describe eating your friend's French fries is not hateful, while Photoshopping Pepe in front of a concentration camp is[10]. He also noted that "the hate symbol database isn't the final stop for this meme," suggesting Pepe could move past the association[10]. Hong Kong protesters' adoption of Pepe during the 2019 pro-democracy movement showed the image could be reclaimed for entirely different purposes[1]. Furie's legal battles, including his case against Infowars, set precedents for independent creators fighting to maintain control of their work in the internet age[5]. ## Fun Facts - The real-life inspiration for the bathroom scene came from Furie's cousin David, who pulled his pants all the way down at public urinals when they were kids[2]. - Furie's partner Aiyana actually posed for the drawing, bending over near a toilet so Furie could sketch the scene[2]. - "Feels Good Man" was the first time Furie learned what the word "meme" meant[2]. - Director Arthur Jones finished editing the documentary just two days before its Sundance premiere, describing the process as a "slow-rolling panic attack"[7]. - Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com wrote that Jones' film "is a beacon of internet literacy about a whole new language: that memes are flexible, omnipotent, and pieces of a phenomenon more powerful than their creators"[7]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Feels Good Man? "Feels Good Man" is a catchphrase and reaction image from Matt Furie's *Boy's Club* comic, where Pepe the Frog explains pulling his pants down to urinate by saying "feels good, man." It became one of the first major Pepe memes after spreading through 4chan and Something Awful in 2008[2]. ### Where did Feels Good Man come from? The phrase originates from a comic strip in Matt Furie's *Boy's Club* series, first posted to his MySpace blog around late 2005. It went viral after being uploaded to 4chan's /b/ board in early 2008 and posted to Something Awful on February 4th, 2008 by contributor Jon Hendren[6]. ### What does Feels Good Man mean? The phrase expresses casual satisfaction or contentment with a situation, especially one that might seem trivial or unusual to others. It's a relaxed, no-big-deal reaction to simple pleasures[2]. ### How do you use Feels Good Man? Post the Pepe reaction image or type the phrase in response to something that brings simple enjoyment. It works as a standalone reply in threads or as text overlaid on the image. The inverted "Feels Bad Man" version is used for disappointment[6]. ### Is Feels Good Man still popular? As a standalone meme, "Feels Good Man" peaked in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but its influence is massive. Pepe variants on Twitch and other platforms still circulate in largely apolitical contexts, and the 2020 documentary brought renewed attention to the phrase's origin[1]. ### Who is Matt Furie? Matt Furie is a San Francisco-based cartoonist who created Pepe the Frog as part of his indie comic *Boy's Club*. He spent years fighting to reclaim Pepe from alt-right co-optation through legal action and creative campaigns[1]. ### What is the Feels Good Man documentary? *Feels Good Man* (2020) is a documentary directed by Arthur Jones that follows Furie's struggle to reclaim Pepe after the character was co-opted as a political symbol. It won a Sundance Special Jury Award and a 2021 Emmy for Outstanding Research: Documentary[7]. ### How did Pepe become a hate symbol? When mainstream users adopted Pepe, 4chan communities tried to repel "normies" by creating deliberately offensive versions. This coincided with the 2016 Trump campaign, and the ADL added Pepe to its hate symbol database in September 2016[10]. ### Did Matt Furie kill Pepe? Furie published a comic strip in 2017 depicting Pepe's funeral, attempting to symbolically end the character's association with hate. The effort didn't stop the meme's circulation, though Furie later found joy in drawing Pepe again after seeing him used by Hong Kong protesters[5]. ### What is Feels Bad Man? "Feels Bad Man" is an inverted version of the meme featuring a sad-looking Pepe, first appearing in 2009 on 4chan and Bodybuilding Forums. It's used as a reaction image to express disappointment or sadness[6]. ### How did Pepe get reclaimed? During the 2019 Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, demonstrators adopted Pepe as a symbol of resistance, giving the character positive political meaning. Furie also pursued legal victories against unauthorized commercial uses of his creation[1]. ### What are Rare Pepes? Rare Pepes are a blockchain-based art project that ran from 2016 to 2018, producing over 1,700 Pepe-themed digital artworks on Bitcoin's Counterparty platform. Furie contributed his own piece to the collection in October 2021[8]. ## References 1. ['Feels Good Man' Traces How Pepe The Frog Morphed In Meaning : NPR]() 2. [Birth of The Meme | Book of Kek]() 3. [The History of a Meme Feels Good, Man in the Documentary ‘Feels Good Man’ | Jmunney's Blog]() 4. [Feels Good Man - Know Your Meme]() 5. [Feels Good Man]() 6. [Feels Good Man - Urban Dictionary]() 7. [Feels Good Man | Films | Battle to Take Pepe the Frog Back | PBS]() 8. ['Feels Good Man' Explores the Strange History of the Iconic Pepe the Frog]() 9. [From Meme to Mayhem: ‘Feels Good Man’ Doc Seeks to Explain Pepe the Frog - Film Independent]() 10. [The True Story Behind the Origins of Pepe the Frog]() 11. [‘Feels Good Man’: Pepe and the alt-right - The Student Life]() 12. [How 'Pepe the Frog' went from harmless to hate symbol - Los Angeles Times]() 13. [H2k9: Ginoverseer Revelations | Manga Archive | Gaia Online]() 14. [MySpace.com Blogs - Lord of Moldovia MySpace Blog - BOY’S CLUB]() 15. [Feels Good Man Explained]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/feels-good-man Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library