# People With ADHD Are Not Motivated By Rewards On April 13, 2021, Twitter user @siderealmaven posted a theory that ADHD brains chase joy rather than money or necessity, drawing praise alongside pushback accusing her of infantilizing people with ADHD[1]. Within a day, the sentence had been rebuilt into a snowclone, with posters subbing in gamers and revenge-driven action heroes while keeping the original cadence intact[5]. ## Origin On April 13, 2021, Twitter user @siderealmaven posted, "People w/ ADHD are not motivated by rewards. They are motivated by the joy they get out of doing things. It's very hard for ADHD people to force themselves to do work they don't enjoy, even if the reward is money or something they need. They need to feel good about what they do." The tweet picked up more than 17,000 retweets and 89,000 likes[1]. Replies split between agreement from other people with ADHD and complaints that the post over-romanticized the disorder[3]. That split set up the parody wave the next day, once quote-tweeters started treating the sentence as a reusable template. - **Platform:** Twitter - **Creator:** @siderealmaven - **Date:** 2021 ## Overview The joke template keeps @siderealmaven's four-sentence structure almost word-for-word and only changes the subject group. Posters replace "people with ADHD" with gamers, action-movie protagonists or any other category, then let the earnest therapy-speak phrasing ("They need to feel good about what they do") do the comedic work[3]. The humor relies on applying clinical motivation language to groups that very obviously are motivated by rewards, like competitive gamers or hired killers[5]. Two flavors of parody showed up right away. One flavor played the sentence straight on an absurd group, as when @GarbageApe reused the exact wording for "gamers"[5]. The other flavor broke the pattern after the opening clause and veered into a specific action-movie backstory, as with @Nikostratis's riff about a retired hitman avenging a '69 Mustang and a dead dog[4]. The pushback that drove the parody came from ADHD posters themselves, who argued the original framing read as infantilizing and swapped the warm interpretation for jokes about just wanting Vyvanse[2]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is People With ADHD Are Not Motivated By Rewards? It is a Twitter snowclone built from an April 2021 tweet by @siderealmaven claiming people with ADHD are driven by joy, not rewards[1]. Parody versions keep the four-sentence shape and only change the group being described[5]. ### Where did People With ADHD Are Not Motivated By Rewards come from? The sentence comes from an April 13, 2021 tweet by @siderealmaven that gathered more than 89,000 likes before critics and parodists took it apart[1]. ### What does People With ADHD Are Not Motivated By Rewards mean? In the original, it means ADHD brains need intrinsic enjoyment to act, even when money or survival is on the line[1]. In the parody, the pattern is used ironically to describe groups that clearly do chase rewards, like gamers or revenge-driven action heroes[4]. ### How do you use People With ADHD Are Not Motivated By Rewards? Posters typically keep @siderealmaven's exact phrasing and only replace "people with ADHD" with another group, as @GarbageApe did with "gamers"[5]. A common variation keeps the first clause and then swerves into an unrelated action-movie backstory, like @Nikostratis's Mustang-revenge version[4]. ### Is People With ADHD Are Not Motivated By Rewards still popular? The snowclone is tied to the April 2021 Twitter cycle around @siderealmaven's tweet and the Vyvanse pushback, and no documented later wave extended it onto other platforms[6]. ## References 1. [https://twitter.com/siderealmaven/status/1382070753923850242]() 2. [https://twitter.com/Boringstein/status/1382408628397867019]() 3. [https://twitter.com/nikostratis/status/1382443651415080961]() 4. [https://twitter.com/flowrmeadow/status/1382449559830429696]() 5. [https://twitter.com/GarbageApe/status/1382407168809435139]() 6. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people-with-adhd-are-not-motivated-by-rewards]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/people-with-adhd-are-not-motivated-by-rewards Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library