Dinner With Jay-Z Or $500k

About

Dinner With Jay-Z Or $500k refers to a viral question asking users whether they would rather have a dinner and business meeting with rapper Jay-Z or be given a large sum of money, typically $500,000. In October 2021, a Twitter user who picked the dinner with Jay-Z went viral as users made fun of his choice, seeing the money as the obvious and correct answer.

Origin

It is unknown who first asked online whether users would rather have dinner with Jay-Z or receive money. One of the earliest available posts asking the question was posted on March 15th, 2017, by Instagram^[1] user hmtwnhero, who posted an image showing white text on a black background reading, "$10,000 in cash of 10minute dinner with Jay-Z?" The majority of the answers said that cash is the right option (shown below).

The question went viral on Twitter^[2] in January 2018 when a now-suspended user @FuckItsBianca posted it, receiving answers both supporting the dinner and the money.

Spread

The question was occasionally asked by web users over the following years with people generally agreeing that the money is the better option despite Jay-Z's business success. For example, on February 1st, 2018, YouTuber KevOnStage posted a video examining the answers from the viral post by Twitter user @FuckItsBianca, generally using the video to make fun of people who choose the dinner, gaining over 14,800 views in three years (shown below). He also suggests Jay-Z would think you're stupid if you chose the dinner over the money.

On September 3rd, 2021, Twitter^[3] user @profitwithant made a post saying people who pick the money "don't understand," saying the dinner with Jay-Z is the right choice because of his business success and "He’ll give you the blueprint on being wealthy and successful" (shown below). The tweet gained over 13,700 retweets and 3,000 likes in just under two months. The tweet was largely criticized through quote-retweets and in the media, inspiring stories on Digg^[4] and Yahoo! News.^[5]

Memes about the question increased over the next two months making fun of the idea of people who picked the dinner over the money. On September 6th, Twitter^[6] user @allgroovydude made a post comedically imagining the dinner with Jay-Z going terribly, gaining over 247,000 likes and 29,000 retweets in a month (shown below, left). On September 7th, the Worldstar Instagram^[7] page asked the question, gaining over 281,000 likes and 32,000 comments. On September 8th, Tidal's Twitter account, a music service owned by Jay-Z, tweeted "Take the $500K," gaining over 271,000 likes and 69,000 retweets in a month (shown below, right). Some joked that the tweet was likely made directly by Jay-Z.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References