About
If a Dog Wore Pants is an illustration of a dog wearing pants on all four legs juxtaposed with the same dog wearing pants on his hind quarters, asking viewers which style would be correct. The image was widely circulated across a variety of social media platforms in late December 2015.
Origin
On December 28th, 2015, the Utopian Raspberry – Modern Oasis Machine Facebook[1] page posted two illustrations of a dog wearing pants with the caption “If a dog wore pants would he wear them like this or like this?” (shown below). Within 48 hours, the post gained over 4,800 shares, 1,500 likes and 400 comments.
Spread
That evening, Jared Keller, deputy editor of the men’s interest publication Maxim, posted the image on Twitter.[6] In two days, the tweet garnered more than 35,900 likes and 31,000 retweets. That evening, Keller revealed that 81% of Twitter responses voted that the dog should wear the pants on two legs (shown below).[7]
The following day, Redditor boobsareforever reposted the image to the /r/funny[2] subreddit, where it received upwards of 5,300 votes (94% upvoted) and 1,800 comments in the first 24 hours. Also on December 29th, Redditor flooid submitted an edited version of the image titled “If a man wore pants,” featuring a human substituted for the dog in the illustration (shown below). In less 24 hours, the post gained over 4,000 votes (82% upvoted) and 900 comments on /r/funny.[8] In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the meme, including the Washington Post,[3] Business Insider[4] and the IBI Times.[5]
If Pants Wore Pants
On April 5th, 2017, Twitter user @bobby[9] revived the debate by asking “If pants wore pants, would they wear them like this, or like this?” His tweet, shown below, gained over 3,000 retweets.
His tweet generated dozens of responses as people argued over the proper way pants would wear pants. The tweets made Twitter Moments[10] and Mashable[11] that day.
Search Interest
External References
[1]Facebok – Utopian Raspberry – Modern Oasis Machine
[2]Reddit – Only baffling question Ive ever come across on Facebook
[3]Washington Post – How should a dog wear pants
[4]Business Insider – The internet cant decide how dogs should wear pants
[5]IBI Times – How a dog wears pants
[6]Twitter – @jaredbkeller
[7]Twitter – @jaredbkeller
[8]Reddit – If a man wore pants
[10]Twitter Moments – How do pants wear pants?
[11]Mashable – The internet is debating how pants would wear pants, and dear god what have we done?