Some of you might have seen the post floating around which accuses the shroomjak of being a demon. As much as this may seem a substanceless and in fact insane claim to many, it is grounded in a secular reality and a tradition of folklore.
If you don’t already know what the shroomjak is, I won’t explain it in much detail. But it’s just an image of a wojak mushroom which someone replied to with “kys”. In the second post I will be referring to a post on /x/ (paranormal board) that makes multiple claims which I will list in bullet style as it is easier:
- Childish innocence in the original post exists to mask its sinister nature
- The “kys” replier was right all along and simply acting on natural instinct
- The demon that appeared to someone is spreading like a fungus through people’s minds
- The mushroom has caused mental deterioration and cult-like behaviour
- The above behaviour is e-worship of this demon
- The /x/poster astral projected, invoked the demon, the demon attacked them, and they barely escaped with their life.
Childish Innocence and Natural Instinct — Part One
The first thing we have to look at is its composition. Your eyes are automatically drawn to the smile. It’s a smug mocking smile and combined with the eyes, it seems to stare at you. Almost as if it were all-knowing, it knows something you don’t know and is looking at you, mocking you. This reminds me of Alberti’s Theorem and various works of renaissance art. As if I recall correctly, Alberti suggests among many other things to add a figure which seems to be looking out at the viewer and you will see this in some of Botticelli’s artworks like Madonna of the Pomegranate. But if anything, it reminds me of a painting I have talked about a million times, Vir Heroicus Sublimis which is simply a massive red canvas, larger than a human. It hangs there on the wall, seemingly glaring down at the viewer. Its purpose is to intimidate, to trigger primitive feelings. And one could compare this to the shroomjak. It is the painting triggering a primitive emotion and that’s why the commenter replied with “kys”.
But another thing to touch on in its composition which makes it intimidating is that it’s holding steadfast eye contact. Many people will agree that in the physical world that this is intimidating. Maintained eye contact can be read as a sign of sexual interest or aggression among a few other things. If a stranger is making prolonged eye contact, it triggers feelings of discomfort. And if you yourself hold contact for long, the other person could take it as an invitation for a fight.
And this is what is happening. The mushroom might not be challenging you to a fight but it’s staring you down. It is asserting dominance and people in higher positions of power will generally hold their eye contact longer (Daniel, unknown). They are asking you to submit. The mushroom is asking you to submit.
Childish Innocence and Natural Instinct — Part Two
And this, in fact, reminds me of another meme that demonstrates exactly what I am talking about in a memetic format. It is a wojak, eyes red with a flood of tears saying “tell me the name of God you fungal piece of shit” while the mushroom remains completely calm and collected. The mushroom is of higher authority and it is maintaining its calm demeanour and eye contact, waiting for the other person to ‘give in’ and submit first. In this case, that is the other wojak. They then respond with a gun. And the shroomjak says something. Does it need to say anything when it is the more powerful entity?
Something that also might make this uncanny is that the shroomjak is an animation, a pastiche of the first wojak. And the joke in the thing is both the normal wojak’s fear but also that it’s coming in contact with its pastiche. And some might find something unnatural and uncanny about that. A perversion of nature. It shouldn’t be doing it perhaps. Does it have a right to do that?
And it is not the only meme in a similar vein. Another one would be the one where a stick figure metamorphs into a dark bloody goop before becoming the shroomjak. Each panel is disgusting and bloody with literal horrific otherworldly sounds occurring but the last panel is an utterly blank and ‘virginal’ shroomjak, almost heavenly in nature. The implication is that the horror didn’t stop. The last image is part of the horror. It is an eldritch horror. By now, you have realised that we have circled from making claims that it is in fact a demon, to prove that it is an eldritch horror by purely secular means. Even if it may just be a demon in the same veil of ‘reality’ as something birthed by Lovecraft.
Mind Fungus and e-Worship
The first thing you notice is that the shroomjak has no punchline. Sure the “kys” made it a funny meme and whatnot but otherwise, it’s simply a reaction image. And it’s not even a proper reaction image unless you count the act of challenging the viewer as a reaction image.
They are literally correct. It may not be a demon but they’re right that it’s a memetic demon. And they’re right about the observations of cult-like behaviour and mental deterioration. As someone with an interest in internet history and culture, I have never seen a meme so devoid of anything spread so quickly. The only thing you could argue is a punchline is the “kys” but most uses of the meme seem to be the isolated shroomjak.
Though I would like to note that a meme being iconic and spreading quickly is not the same thing. Shrek is iconic. LazyTown is iconic. They’ve imprinted on a whole generation’s sense of humour. But in the case of LazyTown, there is a punchline of sorts. There is something you can easily alter and edit and the meme itself took a month to hit the mainstream of internet culture.
I would like to touch on the stages of the shroomjak compared with the stages of a normal meme. A normal meme is often birthed from a quote of sorts where the text can be altered or added to the text. Most of the heavy lifting of a regular meme is the text or in the case of things like LazyTown, the video editing of it. People then take it from its original context and remix it. But each time it maintains some sort of punchline. But this isn’t the case for the shroomjak as it started off without a punchline. Someone replied with “kys” which gave it a punchline of sorts. But otherwise, it has no punchline unless edited into other memes. It doesn’t need a punchline to exist unlike a meme usually does. And the thing is, the shroomjak is a meme but relatively different from even say Ugandan Knuckles or Big Chungus.
But this lack of humour, the veneration of it, all the shroomjak profile pictures, and its relatively unaltered nature are why it might seem so bizarre to some and why some might find the sudden explosion of this meme so bonkers and insane. It is a sigil engraved into the minds of the people that spread it through the memetic noosphere…
The Significance of Fungus
One other thing about the shroomjak is its relevance to drugs (comparable to Psilocybin) and I know I am not the only person who has made this comparison online as I’ve seen relevant video edits of it. So people are spreading this meme, associating it with drug usage. But it also carries relevance to folklore and fantasy works.
When you look at the mushroom, it has spots, conjuring up the image of the Fly Agaric or the toadstool mushroom. This essentially became one of the key motifs of various fantastical artworks linked with fairies but also with a hallucinogenic tradition. By the 19th century, due to various incidents of people ingesting Liberty cap mushrooms, the idea that various species of fungi could provoke hallucinations (Jay, 2020). But the thing is, the toadstool also has the ability to induce a ‘trip’ as observed by Lithuanian professor Gimbutas who reported the usage of the mushroom in remote areas, mixed with vodka at wedding feasts, and that the mushroom was also exported to the Sami for shamanistic rituals. The mushroom is also used by the indigenous people of Siberia and that it is used as an alternative method for achieving a trance state by shamans.
What is interesting is that anthropologist Bogoraz (1904–1909) describes how the mushroom leads to the appearance of spirits of the Fly Agaric (Nyberg, 1992). And that these said spirits take the shape of actual mushrooms and that the user of the mushrooms feels impelled to imitate them. These spirits according to Bogoraz are mischievous and play practical jokes on the user but they also ask for obeisance which has to be given otherwise the person’s life would be in danger. But on a more cheery note, these spirits can also take the user to various worlds. And Saar (1991) discusses the mushroom spirits of what I presume to be another people, the Khanty, and that their spirits are half as tall as men and usually ask why the user has taken these mushrooms.
I am not arguing that the shroomjak is a Siberian spirit or anything and I would also like to point out that due to the time period these accounts were taken in (Bogoraz lived from 1865 to 1936) that this might factor into their accuracy. I simply shared this information as I found it somewhat relevant but fully interesting.
And this all coincided perfectly with the growing interest in Victorian fairy lore which according to Jay (2020), connected mushrooms and toadstools with elves, pixies, hollow hills, unwitting transport of subjects to fairyland, and various other things. Though these stories have always existed, it also reminds me of the Cottingley fairy hoax of 1917, though not Victorian, two girls faked photographs with paper cut-outs of fairies which one of them had copied from a children’s book according to Lyster (2017). But I disagree as Jay (2020) suggests that it is possible that beneath the childish and innocent exterior of fairy culture that it operated as a conduit for secret hidden psychedelic knowledge and that the whimsical fairy tales of the country which had previously been ‘course’ and ‘backwards’ were now semi-sacred and filled with enchantment. And this, according to Jay (2020) allowed them to use this innocence as a guise with which they were free to explore more sensual or erotic themes. Until eventually, the lore of these plants like fairy rings and toadstools became a pictorial motif in its own right.
The aforementioned guise of innocence is exactly what the anonymous poster on the /x/ board accused the shroomjak of donning.
And here I would like to touch on the fairy ring. This motif dates back to at least the medieval period and manifests in many regions of Europe from Scandinavia to Celtic tradition to France to Germany. In some traditions, they’re attributed to witches and in others, they’re attributed to that of elves, for example, dancing elves or the site of witch dancing or where the devil has set down his churn. But either way, one thing that is mostly consistent about the rings is that it’s dangerous to enter these circles or that viewing the elves was dangerous. As some might find it impossible to leave the circle or that the fairies force the person to dance themselves to death.
And this is what the design of the shroomjak not alludes to but is a part of. It’s the descendant of a long folkloric and artistic tradition. And with that, it carries itshHallucinogenic enchanted nature and its link with fae, and so on. If the shroomjak actually happens to be a spirit of sorts, some have told me it’s a neutral spirit instead of a malevolent one and personally I don’t believe the shroomjak is a spirit. But either way, this was a pleasure to research and write.
References
All references are included where they are mentioned first apart from the following:
- Religious use of hallucinogenic fungi: A comparison between Siberian and Mesoamerican cultures by Harri Nyberg (1992).
- Ethnomycological data from Siberia and northeast Asia on the effect of Amanita muscaria by M. Saar (1991).
- The Chukchee. The Jesup North Pacific Expedition by W. Bogoras (1905–1909).
