Whoosh / вжух

About

Whoosht, known in Russia as вжух, is an image of a cat crudely dressed as a wizard that casts unfortunate spells. It grew popular on Russian websites such as Numl in December of 2016.

Origin

The image of the cat is taken from a post on justcuteanimals.com (shown below, left).^[1] It later gained some traction as "Wizard Cat" on me_irl following a post from April 2016 that referred to it as the High Wizard Cat (shown below, right).

On November 6th, 2016, it made it's first appearance on Russian internet as "вжух" in a VK post by MiG,^[6] who saw a Russian variation of the High Wizard Cat and shortened the image's message.^[7]

Spread

The cat appeared on Russian meme generator site risovach^[2] on December 1st, 2016 under the name "вжух", which translates to "Fwoosh" in Russian. After that, it began spreading through Russian social media sites like Numl, VK, and Pikabu. On the 4th, TOday posted a gallery of вжух images on Numl^[3] that gained over 16.3 views. On the 7th, Question.ru^[4] published an article about the spread of the meme, pointing out how the cat speeds up any life process, but the spells "are not always benevolent" (example below).

The cat was introduced to the west by Tumblr user spiritcc,^[5] who on December 10th posted an explainer to their page that gained over 42,000 notes.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References