Headpat

Submission 34,117

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About

Headpat or Head Pat refers to an action of physically expressing of affection towards another person by gently stroking their head. Often appearing in manga and anime, the gesture became a notable meme in the anime community, with the headpat being associated with the feelings of wholesome affection, usually without sexual attraction.

Origin

While it's impossible to identify when the head pat was first featured in manga and anime, the gesture has a long history of being used in these media as a way to express wholesome affection between two characters. Head pat gradually achieved meme status between 2014 and 2015, with the Facebook^[1] group The Church of Head-Pat-Tology and /r/headpats subreddit^[6] being two of the notable drivers behind the spread of the meme. Created on April 25th, 2014 and on July 30th, 2015, the subreddit and the group collected images of female anime and manga characters being patted on the head (example images shown below).

On 4chan's /a/, during 2015, the use of the words "head pat" and "headpat" has more than doubled from 300 and 350 recorded uses prior to December 31st, 2014,^[2]^[3] to over 600 and over 800 recorded uses prior to December 31st, 2015.^[4]^[5]

Spread

In late 2010s, headpat established itself as a meme in the anime / manga community online, with the trend developing simultaneously on Twitter, in anime-related groups on Facebook, on Reddit in /r/headpats, /r/animemes and /r/anime_irl and in other online communities. For example, on August 17th, 2017, YouTube^[7] user Loliconics posted a compilation video of various anime characters being patted on the head. The video received over 1.4 million views in three years.

In the anime community online, headpat holds the status of an appropriate way of expressing affection towards underage anime characters (also known as loli). The headpat meme is closely associated with the "protection" meme and is generally regarded as the opposite of lewding. Additionally, depicting characters, especially anime girls, being patted on the head, is popular in fan art.

In late 2010s, Facebook page The Church of Head-Pat-Tology remained one of the major hubs of headpat-related content online, with the group accumulating over 120,000 followers in five years.

PETTHE Emotes and Pet the X

Mmmm Myes Pet Froge refers to a GIF caption of a frog being petted that inspired similar GIF captions in early-to-mid 2020. A series of Twitch emotes using the hand petting the frog known as PETTHE Emotes began circulating in May 2020.

Pet the X refers to a series of wholesome snowclone video memes featuring a large, disembodied hand petting various characters to make them happy.

Multiple examples within both memes featured anime girls being patted on the head.