What Does The 'She's A 10, But...' Meme And Trend Mean?

*Andy Rooney voice* It seems like nowadays you can't scroll through five tweets without reading "'He's a 10, but' this" and "'She's a 10, but' that" when society should really "A 10-d" to cleaning up its act.

Yes, the She's a 10, But meme has become all the rage on Twitter over the past week, as tweets like "She’s a 10 but she asks you if you’d still love her if she was a worm" and "She’s a 10 but she cries when she’s mad" have gone viral, comedy be damned.

The format seemed to spring out of nowhere, and if you're wondering what the story is behind the new phrasal template meme trend, we have you covered.

Where Did "She's A 10, But" Come From?

The trend actually sprung from TikTok initially, where it was more of a game than a series of banal quips.

On May 31st, 2022, TikToker @leahhwoodss posted a video in which she and her friends passed time on a long car ride by playing a game where one person would present a hypothetical scenario such as, "He's a 6, but drives a nice truck. What does that make him?" The next person would answer how the "nice truck" affected the hypothetical person's attractiveness, and pose a similar hypothetical to the next person.

The game spread on TikTok over the following weeks before hitting Twitter roughly in mid-June 2022. There, the game aspect was lost as people racked up likes and retweets by posting their versions of the hypothetical person, only without the challenge to the reader to rate the person with a significant attribute. From there, the rest is (short) history.

How To Use "She's A 10, But"

The central premise of the meme is to give a hypothetical person of some level of attractiveness a quality that will either positively or negatively affect their attractiveness level. Often this takes the shape of "S/he's a 10 but…" followed by a playful negative attribute, usually intended to be humorous.

While many very mildly clever iterations of the meme have gone viral, the format has spawned a wave of haters, as many feel it is not a particularly humorous or worthwhile meme.

This has led to a situation where some of the broadest iterations of the format veer towards being, for lack of a better term, cheugy, meaning popular but very "basic."

she’s a 10 but has to imagine fake scenarios in order to fall asleep at night

— robin (@lastpages_) June 21, 2022

If you want to post your own "She's a 10, but" meme, understand the market is extremely saturated at the moment, and if you want to stand out, you'll have to come up with an extremely solid punchline.

She’s a 10 but you bolt awake in the mountains of Carthage. You are not online. It is 217 BC. You are the general Hannibal, and you have changed your mind. The future cannot come to pass. Rome must burn.

— Edward Ongweso Jr (@bigblackjacobin) June 23, 2022

For more information on She's a 10 But, check out our entry on the meme here.