Baozou Manhua, also known as Rage Comic, started in China around 2008 as a wall of crude drawings and screaming faces posted on forums and later on its own site and app. Anyone could grab the faces, drop them into a four panel strip and publish a joke the same afternoon.
The sprout on the head became the signature of that scene. It marks the face that keeps growing no matter how bad the punchline gets, and it turned into one of the most reposted images in Chinese internet culture.
By 2019 the platform was pushed offline, yet the faces refused to disappear. They kept living in group chats, stickers and reaction folders around the world. $BAOZOU is that survival instinct written onchain, one screaming head at a time.