What Am I Gonna Do? Say No?

Submission 16,412

Part of a series on Drake. [View Related Entries]

About

"What Am I Gonna Do? Say No? refers to a series of reactions to a tweet by Canadian rapper and recording artist Drake. Online, the tweet, which contains the phrase, has been as the punch line to various jokes about things they would not deny.

Origin

On May 17th, 2012, Drake tweeted,^[1] "What am I gonna do? Say no?" Within six years, the post (shown below) received more than 27,000 retweets and 34,000 likes.

Spread

While the tweet continued to receive comments from followers in the interim, it was not until the 2018 that the phrase became a meme. On July 17th, 2018, Twitter^[2] user @crlosvllarreal used the Drake tweet as the setup to the mock conversation (shown below, left) "Mom: "Quieres otro taco?" Me:"

Over the next week, Drake's tweet began to appear in more and more tweets. On July 22nd, Twitter^[3] user @sarahlostctrl tweeted, "when your hairdresser asks if you’re happy with it." The post (shown below, center) received more than 19,000 retweets and 66,000 likes in four days.

On July 24th, Twitter^[4] user @Dazkys tweeted, " Club Penguin: Do you have your parents permission? Me at 10 years old:" Within two days, the post (shown below, right) received more than 58,000 retweets and 237,000 likes.

The resurgence of the tweet was covered by several media outlets, including Evening Standard,^[5] High Snobiety,^[6] Mashable ^[7] and more. On July 26th, Twitter^[8] published a Moments page on the tweet.