Hit The Slay Button

About

Hit The Slay Button refers to an image of a cartoon RuPaul from the 2021 mobile game RuPaul's Drag Race Superstar saying "hit the slay button." The image became an exploitable in memes including image macros in November of that year, many jokingly interpreting the word "slay" literally to mean "kill" rather than as a term of endearment as intended. It also inspired photoshops where people replace the RuPaul cartoon or paste the "slay button" speech bubble onto other images to change the context. It is also used similarly to the yassification meme, where "hitting the slay button" is used as a euphemism for undergoing a glow up.

Origin

On October 4th, 2021, the mobile game RuPaul's Drag Race Superstar^[1] was released. The game features a cartoon version of various drag queens, as well as the show's host RuPaul, who guides players through the game. On October 27th, Twitter^[2] user @kthejutokes posted an image of cartoon RuPaul saying "hit the slay button!" under the caption, "me whenever anything remotely positive happens," garnering roughly 40 likes in two years (shown below). This is the earliest known use of the meme.

Spread

On November 7th, 2021, Twitter^[6] user @gchaIloner posted three images to Twitter: an image of Toni Collette from Hereditary looking shocked, followed by the image of cartoon RuPaul saying "hit the slay button!" and finally the same image of Collette yassified with heavy makeup photoshopped onto her to make her look unrecognizable (shown below, left). The post gained over 126,000 likes and 12,200 retweets in two weeks.

The meme spread across social media over the course of November, becoming popularized on numerous platforms. On November 13th, 2021, Facebook^[3] page idk just surprise meme posted an image macro using the "slay button" image captioned "RuPaul when I trespass on his oil fracking land," gaining over 150 shares and 250 reacts in 10 days (shown below, left). On the same day, Twitter^[4] user @jpbrammer posted "me solving the trolley problem" using the image to imply you should kill them all, gaining over 32,000 likes and 2,300 retweets in the same span of time (shown below, right).

The meme also spread to video platforms like YouTube. On November 16th, YouTuber funnywes posted a video of Raiden from Metal Gear Solid saying the line, gaining over 41,900 views in a week (shown below).

On November 18th, Redditor newecreator posted a remastered version of the meme to /r/rupaulsdragrace^[5] (see Templates). The hashtag #hittheslaybutton started to become popular on TikTok as well during November in glow-up style videos and photoshops (examples shown below, left and right).

Templates

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References