Yiiking Out — Cartoon bearded man with glasses and plaid shirt holding his head in shock with mouth wide open

Yiiking Out

2021reaction imagesemi-active

Published November 12, 2026

Yiiking Out names the YIIK: A Postmodern RPG sprite of protagonist Alex clutching his head with his mouth agape, a reaction the OneyPlays community turned into a running joke during their 2021 Let's Play. Fans coined the name on /r/OneyPlays that June, and by March 2022 Twitter artists were redrawing their original characters in the same pose for a viral art challenge.

reaction memes lets play memes redraw challenge memes portmanteau memes facial expression memes

Overview

Yiiking Out works in two modes. As a reaction image, the Alex sprite answers any minor annoyance with wildly outsized panic, the hands-on-head, mouth-wide pose standing in for mock horror3. The joke lands because OneyPlays viewers first saw the exact sprite trigger during trivial in-game dialogue where the overreaction made no sense1.

As a redraw template, artists swap Alex for another character while keeping the two-handed head grab and gaping mouth. Early fan edits on /r/OneyPlays treated the sprite as a Soyjak-style pointing meme and a cosplay reference56. Later Twitter redraws aimed the pose at anime characters, webcomic stars and personal OCs, with posters captioning them in the form 'X yiiking out'78.

The spoken verb carries the same meaning. 'Yiiking out' functions as an online portmanteau of YIIK and 'freaking out,' used the way you would say someone is losing it3.

Origin & Background

Platform
YIIK video game / Reddit (naming) / Twitter (redraw spread)
Creator
Unknown
Date
2021

Catalyst: on January 17, 2019, indie developer Ackk Studios released YIIK: A Postmodern RPG, a dialogue-heavy adventure about a man investigating a missing woman1. During cutscenes, protagonist Alex Eggleston repeatedly throws both hands against his head and opens his mouth in a wide screaming shape, the panic sprite that would later get named3.

Earliest known meme: on April 2, 2021, the YouTube channel OneyPlays began a 30-episode Let's Play of YIIK and spent much of the run mocking the sprite for appearing during low-stakes dialogue10. The in-joke spilled onto the subreddit, and on June 9, 2021, Redditor Aperture_Mann published the first notable post calling the pose 'yiiking out,' gathering more than 980 upvotes on /r/OneyPlays2. Ackk Studios made the game and the sprite; Aperture_Mann is credited only with the name, and the original image maker of the first fan edits is unconfirmed3.

How It Spread

Through the back half of 2021, /r/OneyPlays cemented the name with a stream of variants. On August 21, 2021, Redditor kleppy123 uploaded an edited image titled 'Alex yiiking himself' that earned more than 1,400 upvotes4. On October 19, Redditor Zimtschock reworked the sprite into a Two Soyjaks Pointing template and offered it for reuse5, and on October 26 Redditor p3nny-lane published a full cosplay of the pose that gained over 2,100 upvotes6.

In early 2022 the pose found Twitter. On February 16, 2022, user @Luminian_ shared a redraw of Touhou's Reimu Hakurei in the Alex pose, collecting more than 350 retweets and 1,300 likes within a month7. On March 22, 2022, @ManInBookshelf uploaded the sprite with the caption 'Draw your OC YIIKing out,' kicking off an artist challenge that drew over 2,000 retweets and 14,700 likes in four days8.

Participants from across the webcomic and indie art scene joined in. On March 24, 2022, Tails Gets Trolled author Lazerbot answered with a redraw of Tails yiiking out that gained over 60 retweets and 420 likes in a day9. The naming trail, the OneyPlays in-jokes and the Twitter challenge are documented together on Know Your Meme3.

Timeline

2019-01-17

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG released by Ackk Studios, featuring the Alex panic sprite that would later be named.

How to Use This Meme

Pick the Alex sprite with both hands clutching his head and his mouth open, then either use it as a plain reaction when something minor goes wrong, or redraw your character of choice in the identical pose. Captions typically follow the pattern '[Character] yiiking out' or 'Me when [tiny inconvenience]'7.

Frequently Asked Questions