Would You Rather?

Submission 29,472

About

"Would You Rather" is a party game in which the player is presented with a dilemma of choice between two hypothetical scenarios that entail comparable benefits and/or undesirable outcomes. Online, the thought experiment became a popular subject of an exploitable meme featuring the blue-and-red questionnaire template from Either, an online and mobile voting game based on the same concept.

Origin

The template for "Would You Rather" comes from the mobile version of Either, a popular online game version of the party game "Would you rather." Originally titled You Rather, Either^[5] launched in January 2012 by the "digital product company" One Mighty Roar.^[1] By January 2013, You Rather had collected more than 115-million votes.^[2]

Spread

Poll Memes -- 84% vs. 16%

On February 25th, 2013, Redditor the_new_leader posted a screencap of the game, asking "Would you rather 'Find $5' or 'Have your local WNBA team win the championship'" (shown below). The post entitled "Damn Right" received more than 1,200 points (87% upvoted) and 220 comments.^[3]

The question comes a from 2005 reader-mail column by sportswriter Bill Simmons for ESPN, in which a reader writers:

Q: I came up with a fullproof idea for disproving that the WNBA is a real sport. You choose a person from a city that has a WNBA team and ask them the following question, "Would you rather your WNBA team win the championship or be walking along and find a $5 bill on the ground." So far I haven't found anyone that will choose the championship.^[8]

Two years later, the image appeared on Reddit again, when Redditor MrsScurt posted the same question on April 19, 2014 in the /r/funny subreddit, this time with an 84-16% divide (shown below), as well as adding the original YouRather app boarders to the picture. The post received more than 1,900 points (87% upvoted) and 420 comments.^[7]

On April 2nd, Redditor MasturbationMonday uploaded the 2014 version of the meme to the /r/dankmemes subreddit, where it receieved more than 3,700 points (94% upvoted) and 30 comments. The next day, Redditor Alienghost27 posted a variation of the 2014 meme to /r/dankmemes (shown below), receiving more than 1,724 points (98% upvoted).

On April 3rd, 2017, Redditor PurelyCreative posted a template for the meme in the /r/MemeEconomy subreddit.^[4]