Bill Gates' Divorce

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Overview

Bill Gates' Divorce refers to news that Microsoft founder Bill Gates and wife Melinda Gates filed for divorce, announced on May 3rd, 2021. The announcement resulted in numerous memes, including photoshops, image macros and text-posts referencing the event, many joking about plans to seduce the newly single Gates for his money.

Background

On May 3rd, 2021, Bill and Melinda Gates posted the same statement to their Twitter^[1]^[2] accounts, announcing that they had divorced after 27 years of marriage while also confirming that they will continue to work together on their foundation (shown below). Bill's post gained over 200,000 likes and 96,000 retweets in two days. Melinda's garnered over 26,000 likes and 10,000 retweets in the same span of time.

Notable Developments

The news of the Gates' divorce sparked a number of reactions on Twitter^[3]^[4] that day, some critical of Bill and making connections to related coronavirus conspiracy theories (example shown below, left), while others made jokes about the divorce (example shown below, right).

On that day, Twitter^[5] user @RyanShocket posted, "Bill Gates’ wife trying out her new Mac," along with a GIF of someone using an Apple computer, Microsoft's competitor, garnering over 44,700 likes and 5,000 retweets in two days (shown below).

The most common joke about Bill Gates' divorce sees users implying they want to seduce him for his money. For example, On May 4th, Twitter^[6] user @iresimpsonsfan posted, "Me on hearing Bill Gates is single" along with an image of Homer Simpson in a wedding dress, garnering over 1,900 likes and 160 retweets in a day (shown below).

Later that day, Twitter^[12] user @JomiAdeniran made a post working all of the Microsoft Office products into a sentence about the divorce along with an image of rapper Future texting, garnering over 100,000 likes and 22,800 retweets in a day (shown below).

On that date, Redditor u/adequatesenseofself posted to /r/AskReddit,^[7] "So, what’s your plan for seducing Bill Gates?," garnering over 83,000 upvotes, 400 Reddit awards and 5,500 comments joking about how users might seduce Bill (examples shown below, left and right).

On the same day, HITC^[8] and The Sun^[9] posted collections of Bill Gates divorce memes. Redditor u/dinnaehuv1 posted an image macro to /r/dankmemes^[10] referencing May the Fourth and the divorce in a pun, garnering over 26,500 upvotes in a day (shown below, left). On the same date, Redditor u/Mwuaha posted a meme to /r/memes^[11] implying Bill should get with the Queen, garnering over 34,700 upvotes in 16 hours (shown below, right).