A model walks into a coffee shop. It sounds like the perfect set-up for a joke — but thanks to the power of the Internet, the situation resulted in the “Drake Hands” meme — and was hilarious beyond anyone’s expectations.
It all started last week when a Los Angeles-based model, Piper Kennedy, went into a Starbucks there. She met one of the baristas, Brody Ryan Curtis, who asked for her number. Kennedy claimed she “reluctantly” handed it over. Not into him, she stopped replying after a few texts.
Curtis then sent Kennedy a video of himself stroking his face, staring into the camera, as the rapper Drake’s “Hold On, We’re Going Home” played in the background. Kennedy, crying tears of laughter, promptly passed it along to her friend Ben Roc, who uploaded it to Instagram — and a viral hit was born.
To date, the video has nabbed 818,752 views on YouTube, spawning the Twitter hashtag #StarbucksDrakeHands and countless parody videos in turn. People replicated Curtis’ pose on their pets and while wearing unicorn headdresses, and even celebrities such as Snooki and “Breaking Bad” star Aaron Paul have created their own versions.
http://instagram.com/p/fbaZu9kPrh
Midtown filmmaker Jonah Tulis says Curtis deserves to be a laughing stock. Instead of trying to woo with an earnest video, he says you should send something funny or related to a previous conversation. “I like using a video to emphasize some sort of story,” he says.
For example, Andrea Syrtash, relationship expert and author of “It’s Okay to Sleep with Him on the First Date: And Every Other Rule of Dating, Debunked,” says if you want to send a video, it’s best to reference an inside joke or something funny you two talked about. “For instance,” she says, “if you talked about how hipsters are taking over your neighborhood, you can send a quick video of yourself in a fedora and a mustache, or snap a shot of a classic hipster you just walked by.”
Others don’t think the meme is so bad. Says Randi Miclette, a 33-year-old hostess, “Everyone should do their own version of ‘Drake Hands.’ It’s a simple, straight-to-the-point way of saying, ‘Hey, I’m into you, and I have a sense of humor.’ ”
While “Drake Hands” may have transformed into a modern love token, Syrtash is still skeptical.
“There’s a fine line between creepy and romantic,” she cautions. “If you’re sending a video, imagine if it was passed around. Would you be mortified? That may be a good test.”
At least it worked out OK for Curtis — Piper Kennedy was impressed with the way he handled himself following the video fallout. (He has said he was just trying to make her laugh, and didn’t mind that his video was online.) In an interview with Ryan Seacrest, Kennedy said she’d be willing to meet with him in person, though she’s not sure there will ever be a romantic connection.
Hopefully, when she does, he’ll be able to keep his hands off his face.