The Duality of Man

About

The Duality of Man is a catchphrase and cliche commonly used when contrasting two opposite views coming from a similar source. The phrase, meant to show that humans are complex and have polar opposite goals in mind on the same topic, is often used in memes as a reactionary expression when showing other's reactions to content.

Origin

Though it was used colloquially offline and in literature, it was first added to Urban Dictionary under a definition created by user BBKF^[1] on December 16th, 2007, years before it picked up its usage online as a reactionary take. This definition, the first to talk about the dual aspect of man that would later be a core part of the meme, received over 960 likes in 17 years (shown below).

One of the first prominent uses of the catchphrase to show severe dissonance within oneself came from Tumblr user Johnnyjoestar,^[2] who used two different tweets from Notch that took place five months apart about his connection to GamerGate on March 17th, 2016 (shown below).

Spread

The phrase would see itself used in a similar way in the following years, with one big example being on the /r/BossFights subreddit. On May 30th, 2018, a now-deleted Redditor^[3] uploaded an image of a man with an axe versus a man with a car hood, captioning it as the "Duality of Man" with one putting all his stats into attack and the other putting all his stats into defense, earning over 6,000 upvotes in five years (shown below).

With the upcoming release of Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing New Horizons, the Duality of Man became more commonly used when talking about one of the first "Barbenheimers" of pop culture, Doomguy and Isabelle. On October 10th, 2019, Twitter user @Mandyleeplays^[4] uploaded the release dates for both games and simply captioned the two images with her tweet of Duality of Man, earning over 44,000 likes in four years (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References