Duke Dennis Fade-In Memes

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Part of a series on Slow Fade-In Irony. [View Related Entries]

About

Duke Dennis Fade-In Memes, also known as Duke Dennis "Hard" Memes or Duke Dennis x DaBaby, refers to a series of TikTok videos that fade in from black to show a meme with AMP streamer Duke Dennis and a top white caption that most often reads a variant of "I'm hard." Notable examples are "When the bell rings but yo dingaling lowkey hard asl" and "When X hard but I'm harder." Most of the videos used a slowed version of DaBaby's song "BOP." The memes started the genre of Slow Fade-In Irony that became commonplace on TikTok in 2024.

Origin

Before the Duke Dennis "Hard" Memes trend in 2024, memes featuring AMP streamer Duke Dennis and his "fit pics" were already prevalent online, namely in the Your Verification Code is 1196 meme and in the Calm Luh Fit trend.

Starting on January 20th, 2024, TikToker^[1] @oneheart_real posted a series of videos in which an image caption meme would fade in from black. Some of the TikToks^[2] gained millions of plays in a few days.

As part of the series, on January 28th, 2024, TikToker^[3] @oneheart_real posted a video with a Duke Dennis meme that faded in from black, set to a slowed remix of DaBaby's "BOP." The meme's caption read, "can't sleep at night, can't wake up in the morning," and the video earned over 1.6 million plays and 331,500 likes in two days (shown below, left).

Later on January 28th, 2024, TikToker^[4] @oneheart_real posted another video with Duke Dennis and the same TikTok sound,^[5] this time captioned, "lifes hard but I'm harder," earning over 2.7 million plays and 618,200 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Spread

As the videos went viral on January 29th, 2024, other creators on the app quickly added to the trend. For instance, on January 29th, TikToker^[6] @.proxyl posted an iteration that read, "When a bad bih tells me a funny joke but I gotta look mysterious," gaining over 1.1 million plays and 227,000 likes in two days (shown below, left).

On January 30th, 2024, TikToker^[7] @rankedquan posted an iteration reading, "When yo dingaling harder than the math problem but you gotta act confused," gaining over 2.6 million plays and 568,600 likes in one day (shown below, right).

In the following days, other people besides Duke Dennis were included in the meme format. For instance, on January 30th, 2024, TikToker^[8] @tfrd.96 posted a Kevin Hart Reaction Image version, gaining over 3.8 million plays and 973,800 likes in a day (shown below, left).

Also on January 30th, 2024, TikToker^[9] @rawbertos posted a Breaking Bad version with Walter White, receiving roughly 1.1 million plays and 217,500 likes in a day (shown below, right).

By January 31st, 2024, the trend's primary TikTok sound^[5] had amassed over 9,800 posts.