Bao and Marlon Elevator Selfie / Man In Suit vs. Mesh Shirt

About

Bao and Marlon Elevator Selfie or Man In Suit vs. Mesh Shirt refers to a selfie photograph of influencers Marlon Noah and Bao Tran standing in an elevator together, the former wearing a black mesh shirt and baggy pants and the latter wearing a gray suit. The photo was originally posted to Noah's Instagram page as a Story as early as December 2023 and was later reposted to X / Twitter in March 2024 with a prompt asking artists to draw their ships as the two men, inspiring numerous redraws on X and Tumblr over the following weeks.

Origin

Around December 20th, 2023, Instagram influencer marlon.noah posted a photo to his Story of himself and Instagram influencer nbao.t posing in an elevator together, Noah wearing a mesh shirt and baggy pants and Bao wearing a suit (shown below). The image was reposted to X^[1] by @GoGoYowaTane513 that day, writing, "Hiyama Kiyoteru coming to Synthesizer V and meeting SynthV JUN," garnering over 1,800 likes in four months. This is the earliest known use of the image as a meme.

The image was later uploaded to nbao.t's Instagram^[2] page on March 25th, 2024 along with several other photographs of the two together, garnering over 17,000 likes in two weeks.

Spread

On March 31st, 2024, X^[3] user @raerart posted the photo, writing, "draw your ship like this challenge," garnering over 81,000 likes and 14,000 reposts in a week. The post inspired numerous redraws, most notably to X via the quote-reposts and to Tumblr.

For example, on April 4th, X^[4] user @PT_Lynnn posted a Huskerdust Hazbin Hotel redraw that gained over 15,000 likes in six days (shown below, left). On April 8th, X^[5] user @sippycupart posted a Genshin Impact redraw of the meme that gained over 28,000 likes in two days (shown below, right). That week, redraw examples also started appearing on Tumblr.^[6][7]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References