Derpina

About

Derpina is a nickname mainly associated with female characters portrayed in rage comics. While there are several iterations of the character with varying facial expressions, Derpina is most often depicted with a wall-eyed derp face or a smile in Japanese-style emoticon (^ ^).

Origin

Most likely derived from the male counterpart Derp, Derpina began appearing in rage comics as early as 2010. One of the first documented uses of the name in a rage comic was posted in a “Memes of 4chan” thread^[7] on the PokerStrategy forums on February 9th, 2011.

Spread

Later in February, comics featuring Derpina were posted on Tumblr^[5] and FunnyJunk^[6] and by March, Derpina made her first appearance in a comic on Memebase.^[3] In June, a definition entry for Derpina was first added to Urban Dictionary^[4] and the first Facebook fan page^[1] for the character was established, which gained nearly 22,000 likes by January 2013. In May 2011, Derpina was used in a Yahoo! Answers^[8] question from a person seeking solace after a breakup.

In November 2011, the single topic blog Derpina^[9] launched on Tumblr but only made a handful of posts before it stopped updating in August 2012. An additional Facebook fan page^[11] for Derpina featuring Spanish language rage comics was established in January 2012, gaining nearly 45,000 likes within a year. As of January 2013, there are more than 1100 pieces of Derpina fanart on deviantArt^[10] and nearly 900 mentions of Derpina on Reddit.^[12]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References