Drake Hotline Bling
Where it came from
Two screenshots from Drake's 2015 "Hotline Bling" music video — one of him looking disgusted and waving something off, one of him pointing approvingly. Turned into a meme within weeks of the video's release.
Top panel: Drake rejecting a thing. Bottom panel: Drake enthusiastically endorsing a slightly different thing. That's it. That's the meme. You put the worse option on top and the better option on bottom. The entire joke is the ratio — Drake says no to the Oxford comma, Drake says yes to the Oxford comma.
It caught on because it's the cleanest possible "this not that" format. Two panels, no text needed in the image itself, works for literally any comparison. Programmers used it for tabs vs spaces, film nerds used it for aspect ratios, everyone used it for everything.
It's faded from "default comparison meme" to "slightly dated comparison meme" — newer formats like Two Buttons and "nobody: / me:" ate some of its territory — but you still see it regularly, especially in tweets that want to feel approachable.
Search interest, over time
↳ data courtesy of google trends
