Drake Hotline Bling

Reject the obvious option, approve the better one.

This is the easiest format to use and the easiest to waste. The picture does all the arguing for you: the top panel is dismissed, the bottom panel is endorsed, and the reader understands that before reading a single word.

Because the structure is doing the work, the two captions have to be genuinely comparable — the same kind of thing, phrased the same way, differing in exactly one respect. 'Writing tests' against 'Writing tests that actually fail when the code breaks' works because the second is a sharper version of the first. 'Writing tests' against 'Pizza' is not a joke, it is two unrelated statements stacked.

The strongest versions put something mildly transgressive in the bottom panel. The format's whole comedy is Drake endorsing the thing you are not supposed to prefer.

Where the captions go

Common mistakes

• Making the two options unrelated. The gag is a comparison, so they must be the same category of thing.
• Writing the panels the same length as each other regardless of content — a long top and a two-word bottom lands much harder than two matched paragraphs.
• Putting the good option on top. The picture says otherwise and the reader believes the picture.

Where it comes from

Two frames from the 2015 video for Drake's 'Hotline Bling' — he turns away from the camera in the first, points approvingly in the second.

Open this template in the editor