Guy Talking to McDonald’s Drive-Thru Employee (Tumblr)

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Part of a series on Speech Bubbling. [View Related Entries]

About

Guy Talking to McDonald’s Drive-Thru Employee is an exploitable speech bubbling reaction image format used primarily on Tumblr depicting a man ranting about a topic to a confused McDonald's cashier at the drive-thru window. The topic is then traditionally presented through a Tumblr "ask," text post or image with substantial text situated above the meme. The meme format was first used on the site by artist gertritude-art in July 2020 and became significantly popularized throughout 2021, remaining prevalent throughout 2023.

Origin

On July 21st, 2020, Tumblr^[1] user and artist gertritude-art responded to a ranting Tumblr ask with an original speech bubbling reaction image of a man in sunglasses talking to a confused McDonald's drive-thru employee, garnering over 265,000 notes in three years (shown below).

Spread

The format became increasingly popularized on Tumblr over the course of 2021 as users attached it to viral, ranting posts as a reaction image. For example, on January 24th, 2021, Tumblr user autisticexpression made a post that had the image attached to it by Tumblr^[2] user deputy-ajay-ghale, garnering over 140,000 notes in two years.

On March 20th, Tumblr^[3] user this-whole-situation added the reaction image to a post that gained over 29,600 notes in the same span of time (shown below). On August 19th, the original version of the meme was posted to the subreddit /r/CuratedTumblr,^[4] garnering over 500 upvotes in two years.

On November 6th, Tumblr^[5] user goopy-amethyst used the reaction image on a post that gained over 56,000 notes in two years (shown below, left).

On July 20th, 2022, a version of the meme was then posted to /r/Tumblr^[6] that gained over 8,000 upvotes in a year. On August 9th, Tumblr^[7] user the-ghostcrew posted a version of the meme that gained over 160,000 notes in a year (shown below, right).

On December 5th, 2023, X^[8] user @ShitpostGate posted a version of the meme that gained over 46,000 likes in a day.