The Wock / Dwayne "The Wok" Johnson

About

The Wock / Dwayne "The Wok" Johnson or Chinese Dwayne Johnson refers to a series of photoshops of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson made to resemble a Chinese or Asian person. The earliest related meme of its type was uploaded to Facebook in 2015. A version of the meme called "The Wock" using an image of The Rock put through FaceApp's Asian filter became notably prominent in late 2021 following the popularization of China's Social Credits System memes and John Xina memes, featuring a photoshop that imagines John Cena as Chinese to criticize his defense of China's military pressure for reunification with Taiwan.

Origin

On July 30th, 2015, Facebook^[1] page LADBible posted a photograph of an Asian man on a print advertisement who somewhat resembles The Rock, captioned "Asian Dwayne Johnson – The Wok" gaining over 68,000 reactions and 7,100 shares in six years (shown below).

New Asian Dwayne Johnson variants continued to pop up over the course of the late 2010s. On November 20th, 2020, Redditor naisu_omuricesu posted a screenshot to /r/blursedimages^[2] of a FaceApp ad showing off the controversial race change filters,^[3] using The Rock as an example and showing him with an Asian, European and Indian variant, gaining over 25,500 upvotes in 11 months (shown below, left). On December 11th, a 9GAG^[4] user posted a cropped version of the image singling out the Asian version of The Rock, titled the post "Dwayne 'The Wok' Johnson" gaining over 6,000 upvotes in 11 months (shown below, right).

Spread

Memes referencing an Asian version of The Rock continued to spread over the course of late 2020 and 2021. On December 22nd, 2020, iFunny^[5] user SamONellaAcademy posted a shitpost video fading-in on a demotivational posted using the FaceApp Dwayne Johnson over text reading "Dwayne 'Rock-Lee' Jong-sun" (shown below).

On August 12th, 2021, the FaceApp image of The Rock was reposted to /r/blursedimages,^[9] gaining over 24,000 upvotes in two months. In October 2021 Chinese Dwayne Johnson memes started to become popular alongside John Xina and memes about China's social credit system, used to mock China. For example, on October 8th, YouTuber^[6] shidbot420 posted a video titled "John Xina Challenges The Wock" where John Xina competes with The Wock for a higher social credit score, gaining over 938,000 views in two weeks (shown below, left). On October 9th, YouTuber^[7] looseboxer posted a video where The Rock is convinced to join the CCP, transforming him into The Wock, gaining over 301,000 views in a comparable span of time (shown below, right).

On October 11th, shidbot420 posted a video to YouTube^[8] titled "John Xina vs The Wock | Battle for the Social Credits" gaining over 388,000 views in just over a week (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References