About
Sad Frog is a drawing of a depressed looking frog, often accompanied by the text “Feels Bad Man” or “You Will Never X”. It is used to denote feelings of failure or disappointment, either by posting the image or using the phrase “feelsbadman.jpg.” Sad Frog may seen as the antithesis of Feels Good Man.
Origin
The original Sad Frog artwork is based on Matt Furie’s drawing of Pepe the frog. The earliest archived 4chan thread[1] was posted on January 22nd, 2009, in which an altered version of Furie’s original image with the mouth flipped, saying “Feels Bad Man." On August 17th, 2009, a user on the Body Building Forums posted the Sad Frog image with the caption “not good man.”
Pairing the frog with the phrase “You Will Never X” also began some time in 2009. Though the original thread was not archived, it was reuploaded to Polish image hosting service Kyon[3] on June 11th, 2009, noting 4chan’s anime board, /a/, as its original source.
Spread
Throughout 2010, “feelsbadman.jpg” became a popular way of conveying feelings in Greentext style stories throughout 4chan boards, including /mu/[5] (music), /r9k/[6] (Robot9000) and /sp/[7] (sports). The first Sad Frog image compilation was posted to FunnyJunk[8] on June 1st, 2010. The phrase “feels bad, man” was first defined on Urban Dictionary[4] on November 30th, 2010.
A Facebook group called Feels Bad Man[9] was created in December 2009. As of February 2012, it has a little over 1500 likes. In December 2010, Feelsbadman.com[10] was created, with nothing but a picture of the sad frog. There are also two separate Quickmeme pages[11][12] with the picture and an active Tumblr tag.[13]
Notable Examples
Search Interest
Search for “feels bad man” began in August 2009, while search for “sad frog” did not begin to pick up until February 2010. Both terms have a similar pattern of spikes, but since “feels bad man” is a more general phrase, it is more popular.
External References
[1] Chanarchive – feelsbadman.jpg
[2] Body Building Forums – not good man
[3] Kyon – You will never…
[4] Urban Dictionary – feels bad, man
[5] Chanarchive – Concert stories, /mu/
[6] Chanarchive – School Greentext
[7] Chanarchive – Lions vs Bye Week
[9] Facebook – Feels Bad Man
[12] Quickmeme – FEELS BAD MAN
[13] Tumblr – Posts tagged “sad frog”