Do you think jokes about Taylor Swift getting interrupted by Kanye West are hilarious? Do you chortle at even the slightest reference to Kim Kardashian making a sex tape? Does your collection of Beyoncé jokes stop somewhere around the Sasha Fierce era? You're the target audience for Drizzy Tearz, a free iOS game that invites you to wipe away the tears being shed by Drake's 8-bit, disembodied head.
In a purely mechanical sense, the game is fine. You tap the tears falling from Drake's face to discard them, and though a co-worker noted that it's frustrating you can't actually "wipe" the tears away, they're falling too quickly to render that a realistic option anyway. It's accompanied by a soundtrack called Tearz from the 6, a funny-enough title that's underserved by chintzy beats and an impression of the 6 God that's out of tune more often than not. (You can check it out on SoundCloud if you don't want to download the app.)
The real problem with Drizzy Tearz is the shallow, stale joke at its core. Jokes about Drake crying had teeth five years ago, but they hold a lot less water in 2015. It's not a unique problem — tons of simple celebrity-referencing apps achieve minor notoriety every year — but it's one that's glaring in Drake's case. The man is a living, breathing meme factory, and he makes music and videos with the explicit goal of generating memes that achieve critical mass. Why not make a DDR ripoff using scenes from the "Hotline Bling" video? Why not make a tennis game where he's trying to beat Serena and she's playing with her left? There are funnier, fresher ways to lampoon this version of Drake that haven't been explored yet. (There's even a way to make this idea work in the Tough Drake era — poke fun at the gentle, sobbing boy underneath that tough shell — but it's left untouched here.)
I don't blame the person who made Drizzy Tearz for this, either — it's a problem that's perpetuated by websites that recommend apps like this without a second thought. People will click on almost anything Drake-related right now; writing about something like Drizzy Tearz is an easy, fast way to get a casual fan's attention. But it also incentivizes the creation of even more shallow, stale crapware, and that's only going to drown out genuine praise for interesting ideas.
Drake needs to be rendered with accuracy and depth, not more cliché
Of course, I'm participating in the crapware cycle by writing this post. A lot of people who read this will be hearing about Drizzy Tearz for the first time, and their introduction to the game is going to be an inflammatory reaction to a problem they didn't know existed. Why rail against this when I could've just as easily ignored it? I took the plunge because I think Drake is a fascinating musician and person, and because I love to think and write about his work. But I don't know, maybe I'm the real sucker here. I just spent half an hour ranting at length about something I'll probably forget in a few hours. Maybe I'm part of the problem too.
If you want to check Drizzy Tearz out for yourself, you can find it in the App Store.