About

Don Draper At The Movies refers to an image macro of Mad Men protagonist Don Draper in a movie theater smoking a cigarette and watching a film. The screencap was originally taken in 2014 during Season 7 of the show. In the years that followed, meme creators captioned the image on Twitter and elsewhere to humorously hyperbolize what media they enjoy not worthy of serious contemplation.

Origin

On April 27th, 2014, the third episode of Mad Men's seventh season titled "Field Trip" aired on American television.^[1] The episode opened with the camera panning down to Don Draper watching a movie and smoking a cigarette at the cinema (shown below).

On April 28th, 2014, GQ^[2] published an article titled, "The 5 Best-Dressed Gents from Last Night's Mad Men: Field Trip," in which they included Don Draper at the movies in the opening scene, calling his outfit "Cardigan Don." On April 29th, 2014, the Tumblr ^[3] blog madmenwiththingsdrawnonthem was the first to use the scene in a meme, earning over 310 notes in eight years (shown below, left). On November 12th, 2016, GQ's screencap surfaced on 4chan's /tv/^[4] board when an anon wrote, "What are you guys watching tonight?" (shown below, right).

Spread

On April 17th and July 9th, 2017, the image was used again on 4chan's /tv/^[5][6] board. It resurfaced again on /tv/^[7] on August 30th, 2017.

Despite prior usage on 4chan, the image wasn't used en masse until 2022. On June 17th, 2022, Twitter^[8] user DaveMcNamee3000 tweeted the image, captioning it, "me at Minions: Rise of Gru," and earning roughly 370,800 likes in two months (shown below).

On June 18th, 2022, Twitter^[9] user apesgonewiild captioned the image, "me watching the slideshow apple put together of my nudes," earning roughly 61,400 likes over the course of two months (shown below, left). In turn, the virality of these June 2022 tweets inspired more meme creators. For instance, on June 23rd, 2022, iFunnyer ^[10] Hungrysithlord captioned the image, "Me at 8 years old watching Star Wars The Clone Wars film (2008)," and gained roughly 9,900 smiles in two months (shown below, right).

Various Examples

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Search Interest

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External References