Drive Jacket

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Part of a series on Drive (2011). [View Related Entries]

About

The Drive Jacket, also known as the Scorpion Jacket, is a white satin jacket with a yellow scorpion embroidery on its back worn by the Driver, the protagonist of the 2011 film Drive. As the Driver character grew to embody the Literally Me archetype, the jacket became associated with Sigma Males and became a subject of jokes and memes online throughout the 2010s and 2020s.

History

On September 16th, 2011, the action drama film Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Ryan Gosling as the unnamed protagonist known as the Driver, premiered.^[1] Throughout the film, the Driver can often be seen wearing a white satin jacket with a yellow scorpion emblem on the back, commonly referred to as the Drive Jacket (shown below).

Spread

In January 2013, Drive became a meme on 4chan's /tv/ board, with users semi-ironically recognizing the Driver as a relatable character in what later would be named Literally Me Syndrome. During that period, multiple users made posts in which they shared mostly made-up stories of themselves behaving like the Driver in real life. Such stories were often shared in Times You Acted Like the Driver threads on /tv/, /b/ and other boards, with many examples including the narrator putting on a Drive Jacket (examples shown below).

For example, on June 29th, 2013, an anonymous 4chan user made a Drivepost that mentioned him buying a Drive Jacket (shown below, left). That day, Redditor^[2] barbja14 posted a screenshot of the post to /r/4chan.

Prior to June 23rd, 2014, Twitter^[3]^[4] user @margbaramerica created a collage of photographs posted by 4chan users who bought the jacket, posting it to the /tv/ board (shown below). The image has been widely circulated online in the following years.

Following the initial popularization of Drive and the Drive Jacket on 4chan between 2013 and 2016, the clothing item gradually became recognized as an iconic film outfit. On March 11th, 2016, Pajiba^[5] blog published an article titled "An Open Letter to the Guy Wondering If He Should Buy a 'Drive' Jacket," which warned against buying the jacket due to it being nearly impossible to pull off. On May 20th, 2016, GQ^[6] published an article about "the jacket that made Ryan Gosling a style hero."

By the end of the 2010s, the Drive Jacket and the those who wear it became recognized subjects of jokes and memes online. For example, on April 19th, 2019, comedian Andy Richter made a joke about the jacket that received over 60 retweets and 4,500 likes on Twitter^[7] in three years (shown below, left). On July 23rd, 2020, Twitter^[8] user @nopoweradeinusa posted a joke that received over 3,400 retweets and 26,800 likes in two years (shown below, right).

In June 2022, memes about the Drive Jacket saw a minor surge in popularity due to the release of promotional images of Ryan Gosling as Ken in the 2023 film Barbie, which inspired memes about the actor's general association with Literally Me roles.