It’s the ultimate Twitter #goal: to get quote-tweeted by a Hollywood megastar. Calling a 76-year-old woman a slut is a high-stakes way to go about it, but for @theyarenotaboy2 the gamble paid off spectacularly.
3. Gareth Southgate, eat your heart out
Is Sir Keir the physio? Is Sadiq Khan plotting a lucrative move to the Turkish Süper Lig? Is that John Terry? Anyway, this spin on the Platinum Jubilee made for a fitting footie-themed tribute before the ultimate substitution in September.
4. Waiting game
One advantage of the five-mile line to see Her Maj lying in state was that people had time to compose some great tweets. This is my favourite, combining the twin British obsessions of orderly queueing and public transport infrastructure.
5. A new PM tweets...
We can’t say she didn’t warn us. (Tweet has since been removed.)
6. An emoji is worth a thousand words
Scholars have debated how long Miliband, the former Labour leader and bacon-sandwich model, had been sitting on this zinger, sent the week before Liz Truss resigned. Still, worth whatever the wait, and proof that a single emoji can speak louder than 280 characters — and that revenge is a dish best served on social media.
7. Know what I mean, Harry?
Is Harry sad or smiling? Have Harry’s eyes always been that close together? Wouldn’t Harry hate peat bogs being dug up (think of all that carbon dioxide)? These are just some of the questions that may or may not be answered in Spare, Harry’s memoir, out next month, which of course you’ll buy.
8. The saddest word
In October the world as we know it tilted on its axis, as the social media site founded by an eccentric billionaire was bought by an eccentric billionaire. Some celebs feared the home of nuanced debate would turn into a hellscape of violence and lies (with cat gifs), and flounced off. Stephen Fry kept his farewell brief, with a 14-point word score. Though, of course, there is no situation in Scrabble where you’d have seven tiles lying face up on a table, so now who’s spreading fake news?
9. Whassup?
Behind the subtweet lols, the US beer brand was clearly pretty annoyed with Qatar after its eleventh-hour decision not to allow fans to buy their beer inside World Cup stadiums. The tweet was swiftly deleted when Budweiser remembered they still wanted to flog quite a lot of £12 bottles in the fan zones.
10. A word from the proprietor
So, in a victory for free speech or a sign that democracy lies in tatters, Elon Musk released a poll on whether Donald Trump’s Twitter life ban should be rescinded — 52 per cent said yes, 48 per cent said no. The voice of the people is the voice of God, so Trump is out of Twitter jail. He is, at the time of going to press, yet to tweet.
Written by: Martin Hemming
© The Times of London
