Memesplained: Wifejak and Husbandjak

A Guide to Marriedjaks for Dummies

A new wojak has appeared on the scene and it’s the quintessential sign the terminally online are desperately yearning for a return to normalcy. Could it be? An entire meme subculture dedicated to wholesomeness, even among dissident circles?

Introducing: wifejak.

She’s got red hair, a forgettable gray sweater, an unknowing disposition, and a well-meaning soul. That’s the gist of the wifejak. She’s the archetypal normie wife — endowed with female brain, conflict-avoidant with husbandjak except through passive aggressive (but not serious or toxic) suggestions, finds beauty and enjoyment in the little things, and most importantly, isn’t burdened by that which she does not know. Even non-normie wives inhabit many of her quirks which are born out of an womanlike attributes like femininity, prosocial attitude, and a disposition that is more intuitive and emotional.

She’s endearing because there’s a naïveté to her and a sincerity. In its current iteration, she is offline, untainted by online discourse, political factions, and gender wars. She simply *is*. Knowing the internet, that line will be taken out of context and used as an argument for males glorifying some sort of inner pedophilic desires, but that’s not it. Wifejak is a tongue-in-cheek zooomerism akin to “women, amirite?” They’re pleasant observations of the thoughts and behaviors of normie wives, or wives more broadly. Wifeisms, if you will.

Wifejak says things like:

“would you still love me if I was a worm?”

“where are we going this weekend?

“I didn’t order what I wanted”

“Notice anything different?”

“Guess who just got engaged! No, I said guess.”

“I really don’t care. You pick where to eat.”

“Can you fold these towels for me? no not like that. ugh just let me do it”

“No I’m fine, really. *hours later* I just think it’s funny that..”

but perhaps the best embodiment of this meme are the women whose confusion it inspires — unknowingly employing wifejak’s very nature. “I don’t get it. What does this meme mean?” is stereotypical wifejak stuff. Not necessarily because you’re "too stupid” or “too ignorant” to get it, and in fact these people may even consider themselves terminally online, but lack the insight needed to grasp what makes wifejak so amusing — the fact that women say all kinds of shit all the time that is perceived as annoying or funny in an unassuming way. She possesses healthy, normal traits and is archetypally simple. She isn’t a trad wife or “not like the other girls” or a “304”, she’s just wifejak. And to husbandjaks, that’s enough.

I’ve spent so much time on wifejak because in a reverse biblical situation, wifejak was created first. You can read about her origins here but the tl;dr is that a girl making a wojak to resemble herself, which got barely any traction for years, then suddenly fell in the hands of a prominent twitter account, only to be popularized another 2 years later when it turned into a meme format of wife-isms. This is, ironically, the most wifejak thing ever.

Okay, husbandjak is a little more complicated. Twitter account @cartoonshateher (one of the few excellent left leaning posters btw) spawned a new wojak: the husbandjak, only he was thrown together haphazardly, looked disheveled, a mess, like an archetypal incel or a doomer. This did not go over well, because this iteration of husbandjak was not perceived to have been created in good faith. Now we had male twitter seeing women commit the first strike in what was something of a gender ceasefire. In Jordan Peterson voice: Nawt good.

This prompted prominent, largely rw male accounts to basically go, “women: why we can’t have nice things.” CHH’s sleep paralysis demon of a husbandjak was much more tongue-in-cheek than people give her credit for, as her account is dedicated to taking the piss out of various archetypes on the left and right wing, both male and female, so I will white knight that this husbandjak was not in fact born out of malice but certainly could be seen as tone deaf and out of alignment with the original spirit of the meme.

Many users complained husbandjak was not akin to wifejak, because while wifejak comes from a spirit of adoration and playful tasing of a pretty and feminine wife, husbandjak comes from a spirit of hatred and disgust, whilst being a disheveled, clueless manchild.

This is where female twitter course corrected, taking these criticisms into consideration at the husbandjak factory and popping out a brand new, much more handsome, masculine, and put-together husbandjak with more innocent husband-isms. It’s worth mentioning husband and wifejak will rarely be a perfect 1:1 comparison, as the very format of the meme is based on the acknowledgment that male and female psychology are inherently different and produce wildly distinct frames of mind.

But, before moving forward, let’s take a look at husbandjak’s transformation from nightmare fuel to upstanding citizen so as to prevent a movement of Wojaks Going Their Own Way.

Beautiful. He wouldn’t even get stopped at the woj-airport.

Husbandjak is characterized by a disposition of rugged, straightforward, matter-of-factness in contrast to wifejak’s more emotional, intuitive, and agreeable disposition. Husbandjak’s character flaws tend to reveal themselves through a tone deaf emotional unintelligence, while wifejak reveals a sheltered state of being that lacks deeper logical consistency. #NotAll.

Husbandjak says husband shit like:

“What are we doing this weekend? I forgot”

“Don’t touch the cast iron. I’ll wash it.”

“I think the baby wants you”

“You’re just better at cleaning the dishes” (don’t even try to tell me this is a straw man, this one is real, and to be honest, true.)

*tugs ratchet straps* “That’s not going anywhere.”

“oh right the birthday party tomorrow…who’s it again?”

Now for the rumor-filled totally false account of how killjoys tried to ruined wifejak and husbandjak’s flawless reputations:

Believe it or not, there are people who interpret these marriedjaks not as playful banter between the sexes (a much more desirable mode of communication than the everpresent antagonism between egirls and manosphere circles). Oh no, this isn’t all just a bit of fun—no, it’s something much more sinister.

Unsurprisingly, this person got ratioed, with marriedjak defenders citing the reality that wifejak is charming and relatable and that there's nothing meanspirited or resentful about the meme, which are a refreshing break from whatever hellworld we’re usually subjected to. Compare this to many other wojak depictions of women which range from “bpd art hoe” and “libtard” to fetishistic trad wife or self obsessed narcissists. Wifejak is met where she’s at. She’s normal, simple, and espouses thoughts and feelings that are niche to the female experience. Part of the joke is this unattainability of accessing wifejak’s inner thought processes, just as wifejak is unable to access husbandjak’s. Each is a mystery to the other.

These small idiosyncrasies which can be annoying and inconvenient are just part and parcel of living in a big city—err, of being in heterosexual relationships, and obviously we all occupy some place along the wife and husbandjak spectrums, so just because you specifically don’t verbalize these sentiments doesn’t make them any less representative of the wives they’re memeing. They resonate for a reason. The humor is intuitive. You know it when you see it.

Sure, it’s true that wifejak is not merely born out of endearment and claims otherwise are a bit disingenuous. It’s more like lighthearted annoyances that are so unserious and low-stakes that they couldn’t possibly be interpreted as malicious. Because for all of wifejak’s emotional neediness and all of husbandjak’s lack of thoughtfulness, these disparities are what makes them so electric in a symbiotic relationship. They’re so close yet so far away. More alike than we are different, yet the differences are so palpable. In other words: it’s not that deep. And it’s a pleasant change of pace to the usual "women are 304s” and “men ain’t shit” brain rot that dominates X discourse these days.

And as much as this meme format isn’t deep at all, and will of course be weaponized by fringes online who are resentful and can’t quite grasp the spirit of the meme because they have not yet discovered that everything is real and that they should let love flow through them, it is also a little serious in that it reveals an inner desire to retvrn to conventional male x female banter in a more complimentary rather than adversarial tone. It’s a bid for connection, in a world that is so blackpilled that our first reaction to fun, playful shitposting is to believe each are trying to tell the other that they hate each other.

However, there’s a difference between taking the piss out of each other and maliciously stoking gender division — a rampant enough phenomenon that it need no helping hands. The messenger is just as important as the message. “I didn’t think you cared about your birthday that much” is tongue-in-cheek because the poster is not a bitter radical feminist with a malevolent lens through which she views men, contrary to popular belief. Everyone is a CHH target, including herself. And these people use wifejak to embody equally moronic and immature dispositions just as they use husbandjak. But, point taken.

“You can just wear what you’re wearing now” is much more instep with the banality and harmlessness at the heart of husbandjak than “I didn’t know x thing that any idiot who isn’t braindead should know is a big deal wasn’t a big deal” but the joke is that is a specific male coded social blindness that doesn’t apply to women in the same way. Because men and women are different and their weaknesses, likewise, arise from a different nature. Wifejak’s faults lie more in overcomplicating her own problems and causing her own emotional distress for no reason, as exemplified through "would you still be attracted to me if it was my mind and soul but in my best friend's body?”

Nonetheless, it’s my philosophy that you should never whine or cry about a meme. You should simply make a better one. As for me, I have spent the past 48 hours slandering wifejak by painting her as the most insufferable, socially inept person to ever exist for my own amusement so if I make a husbandjak you don’t approve of, mind your business, respectfully.

As for the future of wifejak and husbandjak, only time will tell. As Sean Parker of Napster said in Fincher’s The Social Network, (which was totally snubbed for Best Picture) “you don’t even know what the thing is yet,” which is to say memes are reflections of the culture and the internal attitudes of their posters. What they’re saying now is that people are screaming out for interpersonal closeness, affection, and normalcy. But they could be saying something different tomorrow. And the memes would begin to reflect that, possibly altering their meaning entirely, a la pepe the frog. Only time will tell. But let it be known that if only for a brief moment, there was a gender ceasefire and retreat from freakishness in April, 2024.

Follow me on Twitter @0rang3youglad or the marriedjaks get divorced.