About

Why Women Deserve Less refers to a series of reaction images based on an edited photograph of a man reading a book with the same name on a subway. Starting in April 2020, the image and its various versions have been used on social media as reactions, usually to express disappointment with a woman's actions.

Origin

The image of a person reading a book named Why Women Deserve Less originates from a prank video in which people read books with fake covers on a subway, uploaded by comedian Scott Rogowsky to YouTube^[1] and Facebook^[2] on May 17th, 2016. The video accumulated over 16 million views on YouTube and 510,000 views on Facebook in seven years (shown below).

The man in the image, notably the rapper Future, is edited in instead of a woman who is originally in the video. The author of the edit and where it was first posted are currently unknown.

Spread

In April 2020, the edited image started gaining virality as a reaction on Twitter. The earliest known use of the image is a now-deleted tweet^[3] by user @Howie_Back made on April 6th, 2020, in response to a video of a woman attempting to ruin a basketball trick.

On May 28th, 2020, Twitter^[4] user @keeptheimani posted the earliest found edited version of the reaction, with the title of the book altered to "Why white women deserve less" (shown below). The tweet, used as a reply to the Target Jennifer follow-up video, gained over 110 retweets and 1,600 likes in three years.

The reaction image format maintained its prevalence online throughout the following years, with the reactions typically being used to convey disappointment with women. Many versions of the image were posted, including several versions recaptioned "Why men deserve less," etc.

In February 2023, the format saw a major resurgence in use on Twitter.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References