After years of allowing pretty much any vile shit people can spout off slide, Twitter has started introducing new features meant to both junk up your timeline and, more helpfully, flag specific tweets for containing inaccurate information. The latter update seems to have been rolled out to deal with certain politicians who just can’t help themselves from tweeting lies about matters of international importance.
For instance, a majority of messages secreted from the Donald Trump Twitter account are now flagged with a new alert that tells readers it contains a “disputed” claim. It’s an imperfect solution, sure, but a good first step in trying to slow the deluge of garbage floating down the ol’ information superhighway.
The feature’s intent may be serious, but Twitter can’t let an opportunity to copy-paste recurring phrases into memedom pass. And so now the “this claim is disputed” tag has become a format for all kinds of jokes, good or otherwise.
Following unspoken Twitter protocol, many of these center on lying to yourself about not feeling like trash or despising the world around you.
More creative versions of the meme revolve around the many, many lies we tell ourselves every day.
There are the usual pop culture references…
… but also tweets from the circling brand vultures that inevitably descend to signal the end of a joke just as soon as it gets going. The worst of these, as always, comes from the frozen steak company’s gratingly self-aware corporate PR strategy.
In short, like @aquariaoffical tweeted, this one was over just about as soon as it began.
[via Ad Age]
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