He Didn't Like Drama, and I Was Fucking Shakespeare

About

He Didn't Like Drama, and I Was Fucking Shakespeare refers to memes and jokes that follow the phrasal template "He didn't like X, and I Was Y." The meme references a poem that appears in Ginnie Bale's 2021 poetry collection Drama Queen: Poetry About Toxic Love. Jokes following the phrasal template spread online after the poem was reposted to X / Twitter in early 2023.

Origin

While the original post on Instagram^[1] user and author Ginnie Bale's account has since been deleted, X^[2] user @sonyashea3 reposted a screenshot of Bale's poetry being suggested to them on Instagram under the heading "Posts You May Like" on January 29th, 2023. The post was captioned, "I don't like this," and gathered over 130,000 likes in a year (seen below).

Spread

The earliest notable post using the original "He didn't like drama, and I was fucking Shakespeare" phrasal template was a November 5th, 2023, quote by X user @chipdae^[3] that read, "He didn't like killers / and I was Jeff the" (referencing Jeff the Killer), gathering over 50,000 likes in three months (seen below, left).

On November 6th, X^[4] user @de4dname posted a version of the meme in reference to the infamous Onika Burger trend, gathering over 50,000 likes in a similar timeframe (seen below, right).

On January 16th, 2024, X^[5] user @cooIboobs posted a version of the meme that read, "he hated being found well / and I was a fucking email," gathering over 86,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Also on January 16th, X^[6] user @bangyedawn posted an edit of the meme using the K-pop song "Drama" by aespa (에스파) that gathered over 132,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References