The montage came together in several stages
In May 2015, Cyndago posted an image of Markiplier combined with Lord Farquaad from Shrek. This was not yet the famous version with the Congressional hearings. One of the early known posts in which the altered face is accompanied by the letter E appeared on February 15, 2018, from photo-frier on Tumblr. Thus the single-letter joke itself existed before the April photo of Zuckerberg.
In April 2018 the picture was carried into comparisons of old and new internet humor. On April 13, a version with Zuckerberg's body spread on Reddit; its early post is linked to PuppyBaconChips. The photographic background relates to the American hearings about Facebook held on April 10. The current news frame received the already familiar absurd head. The meme did not arise as one finished work: each stage added a layer recognizable to a new group of viewers.
A face that doesn't belong to this photo
The image shows a man in a suit standing among other people, some of whom are pointing cameras. On his body sits an elongated head with long dark hair, glasses, and Markiplier's face altered to Farquaad's proportions. A large white E covers part of the chest. The colors are oversaturated, the outlines sharp, and grain and traces of crude processing are visible across the frame.
These flaws do expressive work here. The photograph stops looking like a neutral report on an event and becomes a strange object that seems to have endured too many reposts. The white letter, by contrast, keeps a simple and confident shape. It looks almost like a ready answer, although it gives no explanation. The montage does not depict Markiplier's real presence at the hearings: his comic head is substituted into someone else's news scene.
The caption cancels the promised explanation
An ordinary meme gives the viewer a way to connect the image with a recognizable situation, through a caption, a detail, or a familiar gesture. E cuts this connection: the letter adds nothing, although the picture itself is overloaded with detail, including a distorted face, color artifacts, and grain. The gap between the abundance of visual noise and the empty textual conclusion is what sustains the joke: the more the viewer searches for the hidden meaning of the letter, the more obvious it becomes that there is nothing to find.
On repeated encounters, the incomprehensible sign acquires the value of recognition: participants already remember the face and the letter and react to another return of familiar absurdity. The comparison “we used to laugh at full-fledged jokes, now at E” says exactly this: the pleasure lies not in decoding but in the very repetition of the familiar absurdity.
A great announcement about one letter
One can imagine a mock-up of a solemn press conference: many microphones around the tables, a screen prepared for an important statement captioned “Important Announcement,” but when the screen turns on, only E appears. The confident setting promises an event, while the minimal content breaks that promise. Farquaad's head with Markiplier's face makes it even harder to take the scene literally.
In another invented remake, someone draws an enormous diagram explaining the meme, captioned “How to Understand E,” but all the arrows converge on the same letter, so the amount of work does not bring one closer to decoding. A third example depicts a very complex game quest with a reward plaque reading “You received: E.” This is not an answer to a riddle but the comic inadequacy of an answer. The different plots repeat a familiar structure: around one simple sign an overly impressive preparation is built, while the sign keeps its inexplicable self-sufficiency.
