About

Cube vs. Sci-Fi Concept Art, also known as Cube Art Comparisons, is a series of memes in which a grey 3D cube is compared against another cube-shaped object of another specific style or reference on a black background. Spawned by a viral tweet, the exploitable format achieved virality on Twitter in late December 2022.

Origin

On December 24th, 2022, Taiwanese concept artist @SinnraMecha tweeted^[1] an image of two 3D cubes, one plain and the other with a cut running along its sides, captioned "cube" and "sci-fi concept art." The tweet, which parodies a design cliché, gained over 13,700 retweets and 215,000 likes in one week (tweet and image shown below, left and right).

Spread

Starting on December 25th, 2022, other users on Twitter used the image for parodies, either adding a third cube or replacing the second one. For example, on that day, Twitter^[2] user @AlexBolotov4 posted one of the earliest versions of the meme, a reference to ranking systems in video games, which received over 30 retweets and 1,400 likes in five days (shown below, left). Later that day, Twitter^[3] user @AenderLara posted a "wholesome game version" of the meme that garnered over 4,800 retweets and 99,300 likes in a similar timeframe (shown below, right).

In the following days, several versions of the meme went viral on Twitter. For example, on December 27th, Twitter^[4] user @HaleTungsten posted a meme that received over 3,100 retweets and 50,500 likes in three days (shown below, left). On December 28th, Twitter^[5] user @robingarrett_ posted a version that received over 1,300 retweets and 21,900 likes in two days (shown below, right).

The format maintained popularity on Twitter through late December 2022.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References