Drake Meme
The drake meme is a two panel comparison template built from frames of the 2015 Hotline Bling music video: the upper panel waves one option away, the lower panel points approvingly at the other. It states a preference between exactly two things.
Make your own drake meme
Drag any line on the image to move it.
Where the drake meme comes from
The source is one music video, and its dates are well documented. Hotline Bling was released as a single in 2015; the video, directed by Director X, premiered on 19 October 2015 on Apple Music, which had financed it and held a short exclusive window. The set is a series of minimalist boxes lit in shifting blocks of colour. That look drew immediate comparisons to the light installations of the artist James Turrell, and Director X has said publicly that any resemblance was not conscious and that his reference point was the 2002 video for Sean Paul’s Gimme the Light.
The meme was not designed. It was extracted. The video contains a long passage of unaccompanied dancing, and two isolated frames from it happen to read as universal gestures: one arm raised in a dismissive turn away, and a satisfied point directly at the camera. Screenshots began circulating almost immediately, and Know Your Meme dates the first isolated two panel reaction image to 4chan on 31 October 2015, twelve days after the premiere. Some later write ups place the first screencaps earlier in 2015, which cannot be right for a video that did not exist yet, so treat the October date as the reliable one.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2015 | Hotline Bling is released as a single. |
| 19 October 2015 | The Director X video premieres on Apple Music under a timed exclusive. |
| 31 October 2015 | Earliest documented posting of the isolated two panel reject and approve reaction image, on 4chan. |
| Early 2016 | The format crosses to Reddit and mainstream social platforms and picks up the nickname Drakeposting. |
| 2016 onward | Face swapped derivatives appear, replacing the frames with other recognisable characters while keeping the reject and approve structure intact. |
One note on what this page is and is not. The frames show a real, living, named performer. Everything below describes the layout and how people caption it. It makes no claims about the person in the picture, and the captions that work best do the same: they put the joke on the two labels, not on the man in the frame.
What it means and when to use it
The template is a comparison engine and nothing else. Top box is rejected, bottom box is chosen, and that order is fixed. The reason it has outlasted almost every other 2015 format is that it needs no cultural knowledge at all: a turn away and a point are legible to anybody, in any language, at thumbnail size.
The strongest versions do not reject something bad in favour of something good. That is a poster, not a joke. The strongest versions reject the responsible option and choose the one people actually take, which turns the template into a confession.
| Situation | Right use | Wrong use |
|---|---|---|
| Panel order | Rejected option on top, preferred option underneath, every time. | Flipping them. The gestures carry the meaning and readers will not re-read to work it out. |
| Relationship between boxes | Two comparable alternatives at the same level of abstraction. | A cause and its effect, or a before and an after. That is a sequence, not a preference. |
| Where the joke sits | In the choice being obviously worse and obviously what everybody does. | In rejecting something nobody would defend. No tension, no joke. |
| Number of options | Two. | Three or four stacked panels. Reach for expanding brain instead. |
| Targets | Habits, tools, foods, workflows, decisions. | Naming a real person or group in the reject box. It reads as dismissal of a human being, which is a different and meaner move. |
Captions that work
Two boxes. Keep each one a short noun phrase, and make sure the lower one is the choice you are slightly ashamed of.
- devReading the documentation Guessing until the error message changes
- Meal prep on Sunday Deciding at 8pm that cereal is dinner
- Eight hours of sleep One more episode
- devNaming variables properly data, data2, dataFinal
- travelBooking the aisle seat Window seat, then no water for four hours
- workReply all with the correction Screenshot it and send it to one friend
- Cancelling the gym membership Paying monthly for the guilt
- Watching the tutorial all the way through Watching someone else fail at the same step
- Asking to speak to the manager Writing a 900 word review at 1am
- Setting one alarm Setting nine alarms and snoozing all of them
- Finishing the book I started Buying three more books
- workTurning it off and on again Explaining that I already turned it off and on again
Variants and close relatives
| Format | Source | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| Face swapped Drake layouts | Fan edits from 2016 onward | Same two panel structure with a different character in both frames. Useful when the audience is a fandom rather than the general internet. |
| Expanding brain | Four or more stacked panels | Escalation instead of a binary. Use it when there are stages, not sides. |
| Two buttons | A three panel comic template | The choice is agonising rather than obvious. Drake is decisive; two buttons is paralysed. |
| The swerving car at the exit ramp | A stock photograph of a highway junction | A sudden, reckless switch to the worse option. More chaotic and more specific than a calm preference. |
| Spider-Man pointing | A 1967 cartoon frame | The inverse argument. It says the two options are the same thing rather than ranking them. |
Common mistakes
- Putting the preferred option on top. The most frequent error by a wide margin. The upper frame is the rejection and no caption can override the gesture.
- Using it for a timeline. Then and now, before and after, cause and effect: none of these are preferences. The template ranks, it does not narrate.
- Splitting a sentence across the boxes. Each box must read on its own. If box two is meaningless without box one, the format is wrong.
- Rejecting a strawman. If nobody would ever choose the top option, there is no comparison happening and the image is just a statement.
- Cramming three options in. Two panels, two labels. Extra rows dilute the gag and break the recognisable silhouette.
- Making the person in the frames the joke. The template is a layout, not a character. Captions that make claims about the performer are a different kind of post and usually a worse one.
- Long clauses. Anything past about seven words per box stops being scannable, which defeats the one real advantage this template has.
Limits and etiquette
Straight answer on staleness: this is one of the most reused templates in internet history and it has been decorating corporate slide decks since roughly 2017. It has no shock value left. What it has instead is unusual durability, because the two gestures are self explanatory in a way that most formats are not, and a joke that needs no context ages far more slowly than one built on a reference.
Two limits worth naming. It forces a binary, so it is a bad fit for anything with a real trade off, and it invites a false confidence: putting something in the lower panel is not an argument for it. And because the frames show an identifiable living performer, the polite line is that the layout is the tool and the labels are the joke. Captioning the boxes is ordinary internet practice; using the frames to make assertions about the person in them is not the same thing.
The template frame reproduced here is third-party material, hosted for captioning only; rights holders can use the takedown policy at /dmca/.
Frequently asked questions
What is the drake meme actually called?
Most people call it Drakeposting or the Drake Hotline Bling format. Both names describe the same two panel reject and approve layout.
Where do the two frames come from?
The music video for Hotline Bling, directed by Director X, which premiered on Apple Music on 19 October 2015 under a timed exclusive.
When did the drake meme start?
Reaction images spread within weeks of the video. Know Your Meme dates the isolated two panel version to 4chan on 31 October 2015.
Which panel is the rejection?
The top one. The upper frame turns away from an option and the lower frame points approvingly at the preferred one. Reversing them breaks the format.
How many text boxes does the drake template have?
Two. One label for the option being waved away and one for the option being chosen.
What does the drake meme mean?
It states a preference between two comparable options. The humour usually comes from rejecting the sensible choice in favour of the one people actually make.
Can the drake template hold three options?
Not well. Three panel edits exist but they read poorly. For escalation across several steps an expanding brain layout is the better fit.
Is the drake meme still used in 2026?
Yes. It is heavily worn but instantly readable, which has kept it in circulation long after most other 2015 formats disappeared.