About

Upgrade Button is a series of multi-pane images featuring a picture of a person, a stock photo of a finger pressing an "upgrade" key and a glamorous photograph of the same person, indicating that the subject has been "upgraded."

Origin

On December 6th, 2015, Twitter users began posting embarrassing photographs of themselves, followed by a stock photograph of an "upgrade" keyboard key and another photograph in which they appear attractive and well-groomed (shown below).

Spread

On December 8th, 2015, Twitter user @MightyBoog_^[3] posted a multi-pane image containing a photo of his new wheelchair, garnering upwards of 4,900 retweets and 4,600 likes in the next 48 hours (shown below, left). The same day, Twitter user @sadlilflocka^[5] posted a variation featuring two copies of a photograph of Barack Obama, followed by the caption "ain't no upgrade bih" (shown below, right).

On December 9th, The Daily Dot^[1] published an article about the multi-pane image series. The following day, NYMag^[2] published an article titled "#UpgradeChallenge, the Last Great Meme of 2015, Is Pretty Much the Meme Singularity." On December 10th, Twitter user @Big_Mike_71^[4] posted a tweet upgrading a picture of Dallas, Texas into Houston, Texas (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References