About

2/10 Would Not Bang is an image macro series in which photos of physically attractive women (and occasionally men) are scrutinized for minor or imagined flaws, prefaced by an ironically low rating on a scale of one to ten. The images are meant to parody hypercritical judgments made about women’s sex appeal on the Internet.

Origin

The rise in popularity of the phrase "would not bang" can be attributed to the advice animal series Butthurt Dweller, which represents Internet commenters who are smug and judgmental about the physical appearance of others. On August 4th, 2011, a Butthurt Dweller Quickmeme^[14] image was submitted with the caption "'That bitch got fat since high school, would not bang' / 90 lbs overweight" (shown left). On September 15th, another Butthurt Dweller image with the caption "6/10 / Would Not Bang" (shown right) was submitted to the image macro site Meme Generator.^[12]

On January 3rd, 2012, a thread titled "Would not bang" was submitted to 4chan's^[1] /b/ (random) board, which featured a photo of actress, model and WWE fighter Stacy Keibler.^[2] The image was captioned in red text with criticisms of subtle details in the photo and the words "2/10 / Would Not Bang" in white. The thread received 545 replies prior to being archived, many of which included new versions of the meme.

Precursor: Sharp Knees

On June 23rd, 2004, a photo gallery of Playboy model Carla Harvey was submitted to the Internet humor site Fark^[13], to which user studman69 replied:

"I definitely would NOT hit it. Just look at those sharp knees. She is way below my standard."

The comment became an ironic catchphrase on the site and inspired photoshopped screenshots of the comment with images of unattractive men.

Spread

On January 3rd, 2012, a post titled “2/10 would not bang girls” was submitted to the /r/4chan^[3] subreddit, which included images from the original 4chan thread posted earlier that same day. On January 4th, a compilation of “would not bang” examples was submitted to FunnyJunk.^[5] On January 7th, Body Building^[7] forum user KuRdiSh created a thread titled “2/10 WOULD NOT BANG (pic)”, featuring the original image of Stacy Keibler from 4chan. On January 24th, the Internet humor blog UpRoxx^[8] published an article titled “Meme Watch: ‘2/10, Would Not Bang’ Is Here to Help Point Out The Flaws You Might Have Missed”, which applauded the meme for parodying Internet commenters' hyper-criticism of beauty. The following day, Slacktory^[9] writer Cole Stryker published an article titled "2/10 Would Not Bang: 4chan's Funniest New Meme", which included several examples of the series.

The meme has continued to spread on sites like FunnyJunk^[16] and Tumblr^[6] under the tag "#would not bang." As of April 24th, 2012, a Facebook^[15] page for "2/10 Would NOT BANG" has received 192 likes.

Notable Examples

Derivative: Would Bang

On January 23rd, a photo of Valve co-founder Gabe Newell featuring the caption "10/10, would bang" reached the front page of the /r/gaming^[17] subreddit, accumulating over 800 up votes in less than 24 hours. Several other inverse editions of “would not bang” have since been created with unflattering photographs.

Derivative: Would Not X

The phrase has spread to gain usage as the snowclone Would Not X, where X represents a variety of verbs that can be used with the image. On January 26th, The Huffington Post^[10] published a post titled "2/10 Would Not Bang Meme: What Else Won't People Do?", which included variations of the series including "would not eat", "would not save" and "would not date" derivatives.

Search Interest

Searches for "would not bang" were relatively low in volume until January of 2012, the same month the earliest "2/10, would not bang" derivatives appeared.

External References