Impjak

About

Impjak, also known as Impish Soyak Ears or The Swede refers to a Wojak character that's an edited version of the Guinness World Record Soyjak. The Impjak has been used to convey impish behavior and to portray Swedes on imageboard websites like Soyjak.party and 4chan. The Swede stereotype that the Impjak most often satirizes is a native, white, Swedish person who feels negatively about Sweden's immigration growth in the 2020s. Physically, the Impjak has a large face with a shrunken head, double chin, thin beard, big ears and a grin. It was first uploaded to Soyjak.party in late 2020, soon spreading to 4chan's /int/. Going into 2023, Impjak was used in more avant-garde Wojak comics including the Say the Line, Wojak memes.

Origin

On December 20th, 2020, the first-known Impjak drawing was posted to the /soy/^[1] imageboard with the caption "mfw throw poop at neighbour lady" (shown below). Soon after on December 20th, the image was also shared to 4chan's /int/^[2] board by a geo-located Swedish user. The file name was "impish soyak ears.png"

According to the Soyjak Wiki,^[3] Impjak evolved from the Guinness World Record Soyjak^[4] to the Wholesome Soyjak^[5] to, eventually, the Impjak (progression image shown below).

Spread

The Impjak image soon spread to /pol/ ^[6] on December 25th, 2020, to /qa/^[7] on December 27th, 2020 and also to /mu/^[8] on December 30th. Going into early 2021, variations of the Impjak started to surface on 4chan and Soyjak.party. For instance, on January 24th, 2021, an image of the Impjak getting petted was stickied to /soy/^[9] (shown below, left). On February 4th, 2021, a "Swedish Seal of Approval" with Impjak was posted to /qa/^[10] with the caption ">swedish fail" (shown below, right). The phrase "Swedish Fail" as well as the phrase "Swedish Win" was commonly used alongside the Impjak, present in threads on /pol/^[11] in February 2021.

Impjak Adventures

On April 5th, 2021, a "choose your own adventure"-inspired webcomic was created by users on Soyjak.party's /soy/^[12] board called Impjak Adventures (shown below).

Impjak in Pennsylvania

On July 9th, 2021, a thread was started in /qa/^[13] that led with an Impjak variant and requested others to "Post your OC 'jaks here and make requests for new 'jaks." One of the replies in the /qa/^[14] thread was Impjak in Pennsylvania with text reading, "Hey guys, I work for the Pennsylvania Tourism Department and I think this will be an awesome ad that will get lots of people talking about Pennsylvania. What do you think?" (shown below).

Related Memes

Say The Line, Wojak

Say the Line, Wojak is a catchphrase and phrasal template used in a series of Wojak Comics memes that post-ironically mock Overly Specific Wojaks, such as Bearjak and Meowjak, with GigaChad requesting they say a pun based on their appearance. Spawned by a viral tweet, the format saw a minor presence on Twitter in 2022. Many of the object-Wojaks used Impjak's face.

Chudjak

Chudjak, also known as Poljak, is a version of Soyjak popularized on soyjak.party. The parent meme, which originated on 4chan, is meant to depict the cliché appearance of the average 4chan /pol/ user, incels, far-right public shooters and other similar characters. It was modeled to resemble Patrick Crusius, the shooter from the 2019 El Paso Shooting.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References