Will The Rock Ever Finish Buttoning His Sleeve?

About

"Will The Rock Ever Finish Buttoning His Sleeve?" is a rhetorical question used to poke fun at photographs of Dwayne Johnson posing as if he is buttoning the cuff of his shirt.

Origin

On December 15th, 2015, Instagram user masipopal^[1] posted six photographs of Johnson in which he appears to be buttoning the cuff of his shirt along with the caption "Will the rock ever finish buttoning his sleeve? We'lll never know" (shown below). Within one week, the post gained over 29,000 likes and 3,200 comments.

Precursor: Merkel-Raute

In early 2012, photographs of German politician Angela Merkel posing while making a triangle-shaped hand gesture began circulating online (shown below).^[8] The gesture has since been named the "Merkel-Raute"^[9] ("Merkel's rhombus" in English), spawning the use of the emoticon <> in reference to Merkel.

Spread

On December 17th, the image reached the front page of the /r/BlackPeopleTwitter^[3] subreddit, gathering upwards of 5,600 votes (97% upvoted) and 260 comments in four days. The following day, Redditor heskeytime submitted the photos to /r/funny,^[4] where it accumulated more than 6,300 votes (95% upvoted) and 660 comments in 72 hours. On December 18th, Johnson reposted^[2] the photographs along with the hashtags "#TheDayTheCuffPoseOfficiallyDied #MyWristMusclesKeepBreakingTheCuffs #MyNextPoseWillBeUnbuttoningMyPants." In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the Instagram photos, including The Huffington Post,^[5] The Independent^[6] and BroBible.^[7]

Search Interest

Not available.

External References