Daily Struggle / Two Buttons

About

"Daily Struggle" is an exploitable comic featuring a character attempting to push one of two red buttons labeled with contradicting statements.

Origin

On October 25th, 2014, animator Jake Clark posted the original comic to his Tumblr blog,^[1] depicting a visibly shaken character wiping sweat from his brow while struggling to choose between two buttons labeled "BE A DICK" and "DON'T BE A DICK" (shown below). Clark has since noted the comic was inspired by the Sweating Towel Guy illustration and the character Hank Nova from Timesplitters 2 ^[4]. In the next two years, the comic gained over 9,700 notes.

Spread

On February 1, 2015 the comic was submitted to Imgur by user Robban39 under the title "Daily Struggle" and has been viewed over 1,275,000 times ^[3]. In the coming hours, Redditor AcerRubrum posted the same Imgur submission to r/funny, where it received 3738 points (91% upvoted) and 117 comments prior to being archived ^[2]. Meanwhile, a GIF of the comic was submitted to Imgur, in which the "Be a Dick" button is pressed repeatedly (shown below).

On February 20th, Redditor reposted the original comic to /r/funny,^[5] where it gathered upwards of 2,000 votes (80% upvoted) and 40 comments prior to being archived. On March 29th, a variation of the comic titled "Tumblr's dilemma" in which the two buttons were labeled "People can be born as the wrong gender" and "Gender is a social construct" was submitted to /r/funny,^[7] where it garnered upwards of 4,400 votes (85% upvoted) and 775 comments before it was archived (shown below, left). On June 23rd, Redditor slapkunts posted a version of the comic representing the man as a "proud liberal" and editing the button labels to read "cops are evil and racist" and "you don't need a gun because you have police" to /r/Libertarian^[6] (shown below, right). Prior to being archived, the post gathered more than 3,500 votes (80% upvoted) and 370 comments.

Pushing Both Buttons

On November 11th, 2020, visual artist Petirep posted, "I made a new iteration of the classic 'sweaty button pressing' meme" to Twitter,^[8] along with an original drawing of the Daily Struggle image where the character is pressing both buttons at once in the first panel, and giving a thumbs-up while smiling in the second (shown below, left). On the same day they posted the image to /r/MemeEconomy.^[9] On the same day ShaboomBanana posted the first new version of the meme to Twitter^[10] (shown below, right).

On November 12th, Twitter user memessss28 posted a new version of the meme to Twitter^[11] garnering over 150 retweets and 450 likes in a month (shown below, left). By early December, versions of the meme began finding success on Reddit. On December 11th, Reddit user hardikupreti posted a version of the meme to /r/dankmemes,^[12] garnering over 24,000 upvotes and 20 Reddit awards (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References