feels

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Taking off in the 2010s, the slang feels is a shortened plural of feeling, as in “emotion.” It’s said to come from what’s called the I Know That Feel Bro meme, showing two hairless human figures embracing.

Meme origins get hairy though (unlike those guys above), so strap yourself in. In July, 2009, users on a Polish humor website, Demotywatory, created funny motivational posters. The posters used the Polish phrase to uczucie, “that feeling (when),” to comment on some small but relatable accomplishment, like beating a boss in Super Mario Bros.

Know your meme

To uczucie was picked up by the Polish imageboard Vichan, which made ironic versions of these motivational posters. One user, identified as Wojak or Voyack, posted on a German imageboard, Krautchan, in 2010 an image of a bald man (since called Wojak) complaining that he did not have a girlfriend.

In response, an anonymous apparently user mixed together the then-popular to uczucie with the emerging Wojak to create the I Know That Feel Bro meme, posted to 4chan in January, 2011 and expressing a mocking empathy. To uczucie, it seems, was translated as the humorously ungrammatical “that feel,” pluralized and spread in subsequent memes.

While feels originated with a bro-ish irony, so true of many internet memes, it shed those connotations as it spread in the mainstream. By 2012, feels had caught on as a playful way to express any powerful emotion, from heartbreak to happiness.