Disapproving Drake Meme
I know when that hotline bling
It’s late 2015 and the Hotline Bling video has just dropped. Twitter, Instagram, and Vine all give their own spin on the video.There’s a Buzzfeed listicle about the best ones and people actually read it. It’s all anyone on the internet can talk about. Memes themselves have a longer half life and it remains in the collective consciousness for at least a week.
Today, those memes are merely a memory. We rarely see or think of them except for when we hear Hotline Bling and maybe not even then. The only one I can think of right now is the Wii Tennis one. However one meme endures. The Drake shaking finger no/yes meme. (It does not have a better name.)
The meme is simple. Drake shakes his head No and there's a blank box next to him. Below that Drake points and smiles to indicate yes. We get it. We know it. We see it probably once every two weeks. The format itself is nothing special. Sometimes Drake’s head is replaced by a cat, or Bob from Bob’s Burgers, or one of the Among Us guys but the central idea of the meme remains the same. The Drake meme benefits from never having a period of over saturation. It is not always perfectly utilized but it always a pleasant surprise. There is a sense of ironic detachment when we see the Drake meme today. That part of the joke is using the Drake meme at all to express your opinion. Like all things on the internet the opinion Drake is expressing can be ironic as well.
If you search Drake meme it is one of many, albeit the most popular. Its name under Knowyourmeme is “Drakeposting” referring to the specific 4chan meme of posting the Drake no image. This is different from the version we see on Twitter most often which includes both positive and negative Drake images. Also, There is not a definitive good name for this meme. Drake yes no meme, disapproving Drake. Now we can call it the Hotline Bling meme, but that was not always the case.
What sets The Drake Meme apart, is that the drake meme is a survivor. For all it’s faults, it outlasted the other Hotline Bling memes and it is a top five two choices meme. The others being Distracted Boyfriend, Left Exit Twelve Off Ramp, Kombucha Girl, and Lost in the Desert. It is unconnected to the time of memes that it came from. The first recorded use of it is 2017, well after the video. It's not immediately associated with the Hotline Bling video, even though we know intellectually thats where it comes from. Nor does it have a distinct period you could point to where it was immensely popular. It has always been there. Always in the background. When we use it now, we know it is not currently very popular but it would not seem totally out of step to express an opinion with this meme.
If we must make memes about choosing between two things, why not choose the drake meme. It is concise, reminds us of simpler times, and references an enjoyable music video for an enjoyable song.
This is by no means an endorsement of Drake as a human being.