What Do You Do?

What Do You Do?

Updated Jun 06, 2018 at 09:09PM EDT by Adam.

Added Jun 06, 2018 at 12:19PM EDT by Adam.

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About

What Do You Do? is a dialogue snowclone popular on Twitter in which a person says what they do for a living and another person asks them questions, resulting in the first person getting frustrated and making a hyperbolic joke. The format plays out in a similar fashion to the Where Are You From? meme.

Origin

On June 1st, 2018, Twitter user @Chemjobber[1] started the snowclone by using the "Where Are You From?" format to describe their job as a chemist. The tweet gained over 1,600 retweets and 9,300 likes (shown below).


Chemjobber @Chemjobber Follow "What do you do?" "Chemistry" "Really? What kind of chemistry?" "Organic synthesis" "Oh, what's that?" "It's making new molecules that are mostly made of carbon" "Uhhh, what?" "Drugs - I make drugs. I live in a RV. I am Walter White" 1:55 AM-1 Jun 2018

Spread

In the following days, other Twitter users picked up the format to describe their profession. Many of these were related to media jobs. For example, Twitter user @justjuliawhelan did the joke about her profession as an audiobook narrator, gaining over 100 retweets and 17,00 likes (shown below, left). User Joe Posnanski made the joke about being a sportswriter, gaining over 180 retweets and 1,300 likes (shown below, right).


Julia Whelan @justjuliawhelan Follow "What do you do?" "I'm an audiobook narrator." "Oh! People say I have a good voice. And l like to read. Well history. WWlIl. Does it pay? I'm lookin for a retirement gig. You done anything I woulda heard of?" "Uh...Gone Girl?" "No? Maybe listen to it." "Oh I hate audiobooks." Joe Posnanski @JPosnanski Follow "What do you do?" "I'm a sportswriter." "You get all those free tickets?" "Well, it's like ..." "Can you get me free tickets?" "No, it's .." "Can you get two for me and my brother?" 15

Other professions cited in popular tweets include doctors and psychology professors (shown below).


jeremy faust @jeremyfaust Follow "What do you do?" "I'm an emergency doc'" "Oooh what's the worst thing you've ever seen? ” "Uh the slow trickle of senseless death of youth and minorities that results from our gun-obsessed culture" "You see that in Boston?" "Some but mainly I just see it on CNN. Like you do." 11:02 AM -5 Jun 2018 Josh Grubbs @JoshuaGrubbsPhD Follow "What do you do?" I'm a psychology professor" "Oh, so you can like, read minds and stuff" "No, not really, I am mostly a researcher." "Oh, so what do you research?" "Pornograph.... You know what, yes, yes I do read minds. Let's talk about that."

The jokes were covered by Twitter Moments,[2] Inverse,[3] and Independent.[4] Select All[5] also covered the meme but was critical of it, saying it was mostly a format used for people to humblebrag.

Various Examples


Justin Karp @jskarp Follow "What do you do?" "I'm a director of social media." "So you tweet all day?" "Well no, there's way more to..." "What's your favorite Vine?'" "See we spend a lot of time strateg..." "Can you get me verified?" "*blank stare" 35 your friend Helen @hels Follow "What do you do?" "'m a food writer" "Cool you're a restaurant critic!" "No, l'm a food writer." "I can't believe I met a restaurant critic!" "No, l'm a food writer." "You should review my college friend's restaurant in Indiana! She puts cranberries in the salad!" Linda Holmes Follow @lindaholmes "What do you do?" "I'm a culture writer." "They pay you to watch TV?" "I mean, no. That's not the job part." "l wish I got paid to watch TV." "Okay but" "Nice work if you can get it, huh?" "GO EAT A BEE." Emily Hughes @emilyhughes Follow "What do you do?" "I'm in book publishing." "Oh great, have you ever thought about giving people the ebook for free when they buy the physical book? You should do that. Also books are too expensive so l only shop on amazon." twitter.com/ellenkilloran/... Bettina @HiddenSky FollowV "What do you do?" "I work at a bookstore." "You must love meeting authors and reading books all day!" "Actually, I often deal with potential theft, Code Brown' calls, and so on..." "Oh. *pause* I didn't see [title] on the shelf when I was there. It's in the back, right?" trash baby "what do you do?" "i'm a doctor" "REALLY! a GP?" "no, a psychiatrist" "can you read my mind?" Follow @daddy_snack 03

Search Interest

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Top Comments

Princeso Bubblegum
Princeso Bubblegum

Me: I'm a mathematician
Them: Do 1689 times 657
Me: I'm not a human calculator

or
Me: I'm a mathematician
Them: What applications does that have?
Me: Nothing.
Them: ?
Me: I am currently studying what happens if you take an infinite space where you can't loop a string, and relate it to an ant's experience on a 4th dimensional donut, and seeing if that experience maps to drawing a bean on infinitely many infinite spaces combined together.
Them: Oh, so mathematics itself is literally nonsense.

+10
Hootanic
Hootanic

Me: I'm in IT
Them: So what's better, Mac or PC?
Me: It depends on how you define 'better', but [describes differences and weighs pros and cons of ] I guess it depends on what you value more.
Them: So the one that cost more is better?
Me: ⊂•⊃_⊂•⊃ Sure

+4

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