Where did Woll Smoth come from?

It started with a warped Will Smith photo posted to 4chan's /b/ (random) board on November 14th, 2007, a thread that drew 334 replies in about seven hours.

What does Woll Smoth mean?

'Woll Smoth' is a vowel-swapped misspelling of actor Will Smith's name, used because his portrait was the first to get the warp treatment in the original /b/ thread.

How do you use Woll Smoth?

Open a face photo in Photoshop, use the warp tool to pull the eyes, nose and mouth inward into a tiny cluster near the middle of the head, then rewrite the subject's name with the vowels scrambled.

Is Woll Smoth still popular?

The format peaked in waves between 2007 and 2013, including Little Face Mitt during the 2012 US election and a Japanese 'shrunken face' revival covered by Rocket News 24 in 2013; it is now treated as a classic 4chan photoshop format rather than an active trend.

Woll Smoth

Q: What is Woll Smoth?

Woll Smoth is a 2007 Photoshop format that uses the warp tool to shrink a subject's eyes, nose and mouth into a tiny cluster on an otherwise normal face, paired with an intentionally misspelled version of the person's name.

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Published October 8, 2026

Woll Smoth is a Photoshop format from November 2007 that uses the warp tool to drag a subject's eyes, nose and mouth into a tiny cluster on an otherwise normal face. The name is a vowel-swapped misspelling of actor Will Smith, whose warped portrait was the first to run on 4chan's /b/ board, kicking off six years of shrunken-face celebrity edits that eventually crossed into Japanese social media.

photoshop memes misspelling memes 4chan memes late 2000s memes uncanny valley memes

Overview

The joke needs two moves. First, the warp tool in Photoshop pinches a subject's eyes, nose and mouth inward until they cluster near the center of the head, while the forehead, hair and jaw stay their normal size1. Second, the subject's name gets rewritten with the vowels swapped: Will Smith turns into Woll Smoth, Hillary Clinton becomes 'Hollareet Clatnog,' Tom Hanks becomes 'Tom Honks'4. The misspelling is as load-bearing as the photoshop, and both parts are standard across almost every edit in the format.

Later variants pushed the compression further and pulled the nose in too, which produced the 'little face' and 'shrunken face' spinoffs that drove the format's second wind on blog platforms in 2011 and 20126. The pose and lighting of the source photo tend to stay untouched; the only thing changed is the cluster of features, which is what makes the edits read as uncanny instead of simply ugly.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

4chan /b/ (origin), Tumblr / LiveJournal (viral spread)

Date

2007

The earliest known Woll Smoth post went up on 4chan's /b/ (random) board on November 14th, 2007 and drew 334 replies in roughly seven hours1. Other posters answered the thread with their own warped celebrities, replying with pictures whose eyes and mouths had been pinched down the same way1.

The visual look pulled from Nod Flenders, an MS Paint series that had been running on /b/ since June 11th, 2007, in which cartoon figures, including Ned Flanders from The Simpsons, were redrawn with tiny eyes and mouths and renamed with vowel-scrambled spellings2. Woll Smoth lifted that drawing joke off cartoons and onto real celebrity photos with the Photoshop warp tool6.

How It Spread

Woll Smoth got a second /b/ thread four days after the first, on November 18th, 20073. The format jumped to new subjects quickly: on January 4th, 2008, a warped Hillary Clinton edit titled 'Hollareet Clatnog' hit /b/4, and on February 15th a Tom Hanks edit called 'Tom Honks' followed on the same board6. The format escaped 4chan when LiveJournal celebrity gossip community Oh No They Didn't ran a set of examples on February 8th, 20085. Ebaum's World forum member Tilhas started an 'Official Woll Smoth Picture Thread' on March 14th, 2008 that drew over 225 replies across the next two years7.

Shrunken-face edits kept arriving across the next five years. On March 28th, 2009, YouTuber hamsterpineapple uploaded 'Woll Smoth Sings For You,' pairing an animated Woll Smoth face with a distorted Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme; the video reportedly drew over 101,000 views in its first four years before being pulled6. On March 21st, 2012, Redditor Tobran posted a Woll Smoth-styled Me Gusta rage comic to r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu that pulled over 420 up votes8. Later that year, the Little Face Mitt Tumblr launched on August 20th, 2012 with shrunken-face Mitt Romney photos9, and Funny or Die ran a 'Little Face Celebrities' compilation four days later10.

The format then crossed into Japan. On May 1st, 2013, Rocket News 24 wrote up a 'Celebrities with Shrunken Faces' trend sweeping Japanese social media, tying its spread to manga artist Jigoku no Misawa's shrunken-face drawing style from his comedy series Kakkokawaii Sengen11.

Timeline

2009-03-28

YouTuber hamsterpineapple uploads 'Woll Smoth Sings For You,' which reportedly draws over 101,000 views before being removed.

2013-05-01

Rocket News 24 reports on 'Celebrities with Shrunken Faces' sweeping Japanese social media, tied to manga artist Jigoku no Misawa.

How to Use This Meme

To make a Woll Smoth edit, open a straight-on face shot in Photoshop, grab the warp tool and pull the eyes, nose and mouth together into a tiny cluster near the middle of the head, leaving the hair and face outline alone1. Then rewrite the person's name with the vowels swapped. Common convention keeps the pose, lighting and background of the source photo untouched; only the features move. Variants typically either shrink only the eyes and mouth, like the November 2007 original, or push the nose in as well, which is often called the 'little face' or 'shrunken face' version6.