Xok

Confirmed 109,326

Part of a series on Cursed Emojis. [View Related Entries]

About

Xok refers to an illustration of the video game character Pac-Man with sharp teeth appearing to eat a red exit button on a Microsoft Windows window. Prior to its popularity as a part of the Cursed Emoji set, the image has been used in connection to the Pac-Man computer virus. On the Cursed Emojis chart, Xok is known as C3.

Origin

In August 2004, The Lens Flare^[1] user sashastan uploaded the illustration. In a little over 15 years, the image received more than 60,000 views (shown below). They wrote of the illustration, "I was inspired by the Pacman game character. I always thought he was too cute for his appetite."

Spread

On June 6th, 2011 by YouTuber Zephanos uploaded the video "Pacman computer virus," which included the illustration. The video has received more than 1.3 million views in less than nine years (shown below).

On February 21st, 2015, the image was included in an article on Taringa^[2] about the virus. That year, it appeared in a Wordpress^[3] blogpost by adasecurity on the virus. They wrote, "It is not the first time that a virus on the Internet is baptized with a name of some popular element of society. We saw in one of our first entries how even Peter Pan, an endearing character, could become your worst enemy with a single click. Well, in this case, it's not Peter Pan but it's PACMAN, the famous game known as the comecocos."

On October 30th, 2018, Twitter^[4] user @RINBOY used the image in a response to a tweet about the video game Undertale (shown below, left).

The following year, on February 24th, 2019, Redditor^[5] xchicco shared the image in the /r/Ooer subreddit, where it received more than 3,500 points.

on March 17th, 2019, Redditor ^[6] Toast_Reddit launched the /r/xok subreddit, which features variations on the Xok's design.

On May 19th, 2019, YouTuber Astrocookie published a video entitled "Xok Facts." Within the year, the post received more than 9,000 views (shown below, right). Several days later, on May 22nd, the meme was added to the surreal memes Wiki.^[7]

On July 18th, Twitter user @blueaurorius tweeted a collection of "cursed expressions" (shown below) featuring several Xok as C3.^[8] The set was assembled with purposes of using the emojis for reference when ordering artistic commissions and was reposted and used by artists on Twitter, Tumblr and DeviantArt in the following days.^[9]^[10]

In the following months, Xok, together with other emojis of the "cursed" set, received a significant spread in memes online, primarily on Twitter and Instagram.