About

Will You Press the Button?^[1] is a single serving site which presents a hypothetical scenario with a potentially undesirable stipulation to each visitor, who must then decide whether to accept or reject the given offer. In May 2019, memes referencing the site gained significant popularity on Reddit.

History

The site launched on June 16th, 2013, followed the release of a free Android app^[2] on July 3rd. As of October 2013, a Facebook fan page^[3] for the site has accrued more than 7,100 likes.

Precursor

While big red buttons used to activate a powerful force have been a trope^[5] in pop culture for decades, the idea of using one of them to make a decision with both positive and negative effects dates back to a 1970s short story by Richard Matheson titled "Button, Button." In the story, a couple receives a locked box with a button that, when pressed, will give them $50,000 but also cause someone that they didn't know to die. The story has since been readapted twice, first in a March 1986 episode of The Twilight Zone^[6] (shown below, left) and second for the 2009 film The Box^[7] (shown below, right)

Online Presence

Threads dedicated to hypothetical situations being solved by pushing a red button have appeared on 4chan since as early as June 2010^[8] (shown below, left). This type of activity is also reminiscent of “Would You Rather?” threads, which became popular on 4chan in 2011 in discussions of the Fairview Fairview Goat Tower.

As early as June 23rd, screenshots from Will You Press the Button have been shared on 4chan, specifically on /vg/^[9] (Video Game Generals) and /vp/^[10] (Pokemon). By July 25th, additional screenshots also began to surface on FunnyJunk^[11], with another posted to Reddit^[12] two days later. On September 8th, the subreddits /r/WillYouPressTheButton^[13] and /r/WYPTB^[14] were created. Throughout September, additional screenshots from the site were posted on DamnLOL^[15], WeKnowMemes^[16] and Tumblr under the tags #Will You Press The Button?^[17], #Will You Press The Button^[18], #Press The Button^[19] and #WYPTB,^[20] as well as discussions about the user-submitted scenarios on several message boards, including Multiplayer Game Hacking^[21], the Drum and Bass Forum^[22] and Jiggmin.^[23]

2019 Revival

On February 27th, 2019, Reddit user lilmigger posted a What Did It Cost? version of the meme which gained over 64,700 upvotes in one week and had been reposted multiple times in the following months.^[24]

In the following days, more memes based on the format, often containing meta humor, were posted to Reddit, including notable posts to /r/dankmemes,^[25] /r/animemes^[26] and /r/dank_meme^[27] subreddits. In April 2019, a format with an added panel showing Isekai Quartet character Megumin gained popularity in /r/animemes subreddit.^[28]

In mid-May 2019, the format gained significant popularity on Reddit, primarily in /r/dankmemes subreddit, following a popular post submitted by Redditor Comonster on 14th, 2019 (shown below, left).^[29] At that time, multiple posts based on the format, often combined with other memes, were posted to the /r/dankmemes and other subreddits (examples shown below).

Notable Examples

Traffic

On June 28th, 2013, 12 days after the site had launched, the site reached its first milestone of one million interactions, and by September 11th, that number had grown to 10 million. As of October 2013, out of more than 26 million answers provided by the visitors, the button has been pressed nearly 11 million times and avoided more than 15 million times, while nearly 30,000 questions have been submitted by visitors with roughly 1/6 of them in active rotation. The site has an Alexa^[4] rank of 18,626 in the United States and 116,307 globally.

Search Interest

External References