Sweating Towel Guy

Confirmed 429,597

About

Sweating Towel Guy is an exploitable illustration of a man wiping his sweating forehead with a towel which is often used in "my face when" stories (MFW) on 4chan.

Origin

The image was initially used in health articles about excessive sweating.^[2] On September 30th, 2011, the illustration was posted in a thread on the /v/ (video games) board on 4chan^[1], in which an anonymous user told a green text story using the sweating man drawing (shown below). In the post, the sweating towel guy is meant to represent the feeling of anxiety felt by a guy awkwardly trying to leave a Gamestop store.

Spread

On May 11th, 2012, the website Meanwhile On Fit^[3] posted a series of "fat people stories," one of which featured the sweating towel guy image (shown below).

On September 24th, FunnyJunk^[4] user ianosity posted the image alongside an MFW comment about using Wikipedia to write a book report at the last minute. On January 23rd, 2013, NeoGAF^[5] member Dresden posted a photoshopped version of the sweating man (shown below, left). On June 15th, an anonymous 4chan^[6] user posted an edited version of the picture resembling a character from the 2011 action role-playing game Dark Souls (shown below, right) to the /tg (traditional games) board.