About

Business Handshake refers to a series of stock photos depicting a handshake between two business people, which are typically captioned with object labels indicating an agreement between the two on a variety of humorous topics. The variants bear many similarities to Epic Handshake image macros.

Origin

On August 16th, 2018, Redditor BEISisICE^[1] posted an image to the /r/dankmemes subreddit with one arm labeled "centimeters," the other labeled "inches" and the united hands labeled "0" (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post received more than 21,900 points (94% upvoted).

Spread

That day, several more images were posted to /r/dankmemes that continued the conversion, science, or mathematics themes to the labeling. For example, Redditor BEISisICE submitted another image to /r/dankmemes^[2] with one arm labeled "2x+9," the other labeled "8x-6" and the hands labeled "x=2.5" (shown below, left). That day, the post gained 559 points (93% upvoted). On August 17th, 2018, Redditor TheBritishSnob posted the image to /r/dankmemes^[3] with one arm labeled "my girlfriend," the other labeled "√-1" and the hands "being imaginary" (shown below, right).

Meanwhile, the images became commonly used to indicate a numerical agreement. For example, Redditor RhimmJobb^[4] posted an image to DankMemes with one arm labeled Fortnite the other Minecraft, with the agreement labeled "sexual encounters 0" (shown below, left). The same day, Redditor OnceUponAMind posted an image to /r/dankmemes^[5] with one arm labeled "Kg", the other "food in Africa" and the hands "0" (shown below, right).

Group Hand Hold

On August 6th, 2018, Twitter ^[6] user @doodlefrog posted a 2010 stock photo by Tetra Images^[7] of four hands holding each others' wrist. The wrists are labeled with various individuals and groups that are excited about Halloween. The post (shown below) received more than 11,000 retweets and 30,000 likes in less than one month.

Following the post, people began posting variations, using other versions of the same stock photo. On August 8th, Twitter^[8] shared a variation about the band Depeche Mode. The post (shown below, left) received more than 6,000 retweets and 18,000 likes in two weeks. One week later, Twitter^[9] user @brigsbeebear tweeted a version about the artist Lorde. The post (shown below, center) received more than 5,700 retweets and 20,000 likes in less than one week. Several days later, Twitter^[10] user @bitterpola posted a variation about potatoes that received more than 2,200 retweets and 5,300 likes in less than on week.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References