Yo Dawg, we heard you like black people / so we put one in your car, now it's gone
A Yo Dawg post.
Rapper Xzibit, grinning, as host of MTV's Pimp My Ride (2004-2007). On the show his crew rebuilt worn-out cars and filled them with extras: screens in the headrests and gadgets in places nobody expected. The meme imagines him taking the concept one step further than anyone asked. Not just something in your car - the same thing, inside itself. The formula never changes: "Yo dawg, I heard you like X, so I put an X in your X so you can Y while you Y." "Yo dawg, I heard you like coffee, so I put an espresso in your latte so you can stay awake while you wake up." "Yo dawg, I heard you like meetings, so we scheduled a meeting to plan the meeting." Programmers adopted it immediately, because recursion finally had a spokesman. Xzibit has taken it well over the years, which is generous of a man whose name became shorthand for nesting dolls. **Why it caught on:** one sentence template, endless refills, and it explains recursion better than most textbooks.