The old formula and the 2018 wave
The English saying that whoever endures the worst version of a person deserves the best one existed online long before this pair of pictures. It appeared as a statement about character and became material for parodies even before 2018. The origin of the phrase itself is unknown: the common attribution to Marilyn Monroe gives it no reliable history. In memes, what matters is the recognizable structure of a condition and a promise, which can be filled with any images.
In late March and early April 2018, a new visual wave spread on Twitter. A well-known early post by @creeperscult from March 29 compared two images of Mingyu from Seventeen. Then other celebrities, characters, and objects were compared, and even Netflix’s account joined the trend. The pictures took the place of words describing bad and good states. This device made it possible to show a transformation faster than explaining it, and sometimes to make the evaluation itself deliberately absurd.
An apple with a cigarette and an apple in lingerie
The image preserves a Russian remake in the layout of a tweet by @deadlostboy. On the left, under the condition about love, is a yellowish apple with a cigarette stuck into it; beside it are grass and a woven surface. On the right, under the promise of a reward, a red apple wears pink mesh underwear and is placed on a pink background. These are two staged still-life scenes, not photographs of the real ripening of one fruit. The username in the tweet does not establish who shot either of the original setups.
An object pretends to be a complex personality
The cigarette turns the left apple into a caricature of a troubled character; the lingerie turns the right one into an equally caricatured attractive image. The difference reads without faces, poses, or acting. The serious request to accept a person as a whole falls to a fruit incapable of experiencing either hard times or a romantic confession. It is precisely this excessive human role that links two deliberately simple photographs.
The format does not have to prove an objective improvement. Sometimes the right version really is neater or stronger; sometimes it is merely funnier and more festive. The caption announces in advance that it is desirable, and the viewer decides how convincing that promise is. If the “reward” is itself absurd, the joke is aimed at the narrator’s self-confidence: he demands great loyalty in exchange for a result whose value is not obvious at all.
Three invented pairs
The first invented version shows homemade bread. On the left, a shapeless lump of dough sits in a bowl; on the right, a baked loaf with a beautiful crust. The condition about love turns the wait in the kitchen into a romantic test of loyalty. Here the improvement is clear, yet the product talks about its preparation as if it had lived through a difficult personal period and now chooses worthy admirers.
In a second scene, two states of a bicycle are compared: first it stands without a wheel with its chain in a box, then it is decorated with colored ribbons for a ride. The meme voice does not simply rejoice at the repair but sets a condition of access to the festive version for those around. What becomes funny is the disproportion between routine maintenance of an object and the seriousness of the promise that accompanies it.
The third invented pair is deliberately controversial. In the first photo, an old desk lamp calmly lights a book; in the second, the same lamp is wrapped in a garland and topped with a paper crown. The “better” state is now less convenient for reading. The caption confidently promises transformation, but the photos invite the viewer to doubt it: perhaps the modest version was the most pleasant one all along.
No mandatory calendar
Two images can denote a mood, an outfit, a state of readiness, or different ways of showing an object. They do not require division into exact years. So the format keeps its recognizable sequence “accept this, get that,” even when no real change happened between the halves at all.
