That One X Who Don't Play About X

Submission 7,577

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About

That One X Who Don't Play About X, also known as That One Girl Who Don't Play About X or Who Don't Play About, refers to a phrasal template and exploitable that primarily uses an image of a young Black man in church turning around and looking at the camera. The captions of these memes substitute a character into the first "X" and then something that that character "doesn't play with" into the other, usually being a celebrity or subculture. The original image macro and phrase comes from 2014 on Twitter, spreading over the following years.

Origin

On March 1st, 2014, Twitter^[1] user Pyramidology posted a tweet that became its own image macro. In the tweet (shown below) Pyramidology captioned a photo of a young Black man turning around in church with, "That one nigga in church who don't play about God.." The tweet received 17 likes and 34 retweets after being posted.

Spread

The origin tweet above spread as its own image macro to websites like Imgur^[2] going into the years following. This low-quality, moldy version of the tweet (shown below) became the most recognizable version of it going forward.

In 2021, the meme shown above made its way to platforms like Instagram ^[3] and iFunny, ^[4] giving it increased prominence online.

However, it wasn't until Twitter^[5] user beckgoogle posted a version of the meme on December 26th, 2021, that the trend took off in abundance. Their meme (shown below) captioned the image of the young man in church with, "That one girl in rehab who don't play about lil peep." The tweet received roughly 24,700 likes in one week. The meme was also reposted to Instagram^[6] the next day where it received roughly 6,000 likes.

Instagram^[7] user bimbos4budweiser posted an exploited version of the meme on December 27th, 2021, (shown below, left) which replaced "lil peep" with "Young Thug." The post received 115 likes in one week. Twitter^[8] user Smartguyy posted a tweet on December 30th that used the phrasal template with an image of Jennifer Lawrence's character from the movie Don't Look Up. The tweet (shown below, right) used the caption, "The one girl in economics who don’t play about Karl Marx." It received roughly 38,800 likes over the course of six days.

More uses of the phrasal template with the same image of Jennifer Lawrence were posted to Twitter^[9] in the days following. Also, the "girl in rehab" version of the meme continued to be exploited across Instagram^[10] going into January 2022.