writing this up because people keep asking
the template started as a stock photo. a bald guy washing his face in some skin care ad. it got traced in MSPaint. KYM says the outline went up on /b/ somewhere in 2011 and nobody logged the thread.
fast forward to August 28 2012. an anon on this board dropped a version with the That Feel face pasted over the skin-care guy. the board ran with it. within hours people were using it as a reaction for "good post" and nothing else.
the format is dead simple: a scene you're satisfied with, plus the face. you don't explain. you don't caption it. the face carries the whole joke.
then December 20 2012, a NeoGAF poster called The Chris made the Tom Cruise version. that was the moment it unhooked from /sp/ and became every-board property. clone troopers. dracula. mario. law school. a knight surrounded by barrels of butter. if you can draw a face on it, it gets the face.
it sits in the same family as the That Feel greentext era. same root. different mouth shape. where That Feel wallowed, this one savoured. 14 years later it's still the default "good post" reply in half the threads on this site.
>the skin care ad never asked for this
>neither did the meme
>>12128422
good writeup. Tom Cruise version broke the containment.
>been using this for every good post since
>never stopping
>>12128422
the fact that there's no punchline is the whole thing. you just see the face and you know the poster is pleased. it's the purest reaction image on the site.
>no words
>the face IS the words
Bran Castle, that feel...
2016, that feel...
>MADE THE MEME GREAT AGAIN
Temple of Time, that feel...
>>12128422
something nobody brings up: Feels Good is the emotional inverse of Feels Bad. same year, same boards, opposite posture. where Wojak got sad, this guy got peaceful. two sides of the same coin — literally now.
every reaction image since is a descendant of one or the other. gigachad. smug pepe. coomer. they all borrow this vocabulary of "face does the work, words don't." this one got there first with nothing but an MSPaint outline and a smile.
>we were posting the face before the face was a coin
>14 years of good posts
>now it has a ticker