A great stoner comic hinges on the epic feelings a person has while super high in contrast to the reality of that person actually sitting on a couch craving food. Stoner Comics, aka "Tree Comics," were often the perfect expression of what it's like to be stoned out of your mind, thanks in no small part to MS Paint.
If you were high often between 20, chances are you took a deep dive into Stoner Comics and laughed your ass off. Nevertheless, Rage Comics are undoubtedly one of the most important meme genres and certainly one of the most influential creations of MS Paint, even if now they look like a giant sack of cringe. By virtue of their popularity and simplicity, Rage Comics over the years grew into the vehicle for some of the most embarrassing memes, such that looking upon them now elicits the same "was I really into that?" feeling one would get looking at photos from when they were in high school. Trollface, Derp and Derpina, Forever Alone and so many more all became vital characters to internet lexicon. Dozens of crudely rendered characters spread first through 4chan and later Reddit and 9GAG were long understood as internet shorthand for a specific emotion, the internet-dweller's answer to emoji. Much of what we associate with the MS Paint meme aesthetic comes from Rage Comics. To celebrate the life of Paint, we're remembering some of the most influential memes born out of the classic program. As online culture spread into the mainstream, art created in the noble MS Paint began to become visual shorthand for the internet's brand of humor, encompassing both the most cringeworthy and most surreal expressions of shitposting.
Microsoft Paint was always simple to use and never featured any fancy-shmancy image manipulating tools, meaning almost everything drawn MS Paint ended up looking charmingly amateurish, the internet equivalent of a toddler's doodle.
#Ms paint aesthetic windows#
Since 1985, MS Paint has appeared in every version of Windows OS, with its technology gradually evolving from the basic 1-bit monochrome graphic support to the 256-color bitmap throughout its lifetime.
#Ms paint aesthetic update#
Microsoft recently announced its Windows 10 "Fall Creators" Update, and with every update comes a list of features that are outright removed or "deprecated," meaning "not in active development and might be removed in future releases." Appearing on the latter list is more or less a death sentence. It appears Microsoft is considering to retire its clunky yet lovable graphics painting program after 32 years of service.