HA! HA!

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Original advertisement

HA! HA! refers to an Internet phenomenon based on a vintage advertisement for Forbes' Insoluble Dry Plates (a brand of photographic plate) dating from the late 19th century^[1], featuring what appears to be a laughing Quaker, with a customized subtitle in place of the advertisement's original wording.

1 History and appearances
2 Reference
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History and appearances

The meme's first appearance was in January 2003 on the SomethingAwful.com forums, with the wording edited to read "HA! HA! I'm using the Internet!". The creator later uploaded the original version of the image, which showed that the real wording read "Forbes' Insoluble Dry Plates".

The image received additional attention on Fark during the weekend of July 15 - July 17, 2005, when relentless postings of the image (a period that has been named 'the grey wave') prompted a site administrator to post a link that encouraged members to post HA! HA! guy images in its discussion thread, hoping that they would get it out of their systems. Far from killing the meme, the thread ([1] (page is extremely large, will take a long time to load, and may crash your browser)) topped the list of Fark's most popular recent threads, with about 2,400 comments.

Like most such memes, the frequency of the image's appearances decreased significantly after the initial excitement subsided. However, it remains a staple Fark Cliché.

The meme has been referred to by many names, though most variations usually revolve around the "HA! HA!" or Quaker elements of the meme.

The thread made a repeat appearance on July 17th 2006 with new and old HAHA! Photoshops.[2]