Twitter employees left the company in droves Thursday, choosing to take a severance rather than stick around for whatever Elon Musk has in store. And that mass exodus left many Twitter users to assume the site will eventually just stop working. In that apocalyptic spirit, Twitter users were remembering all the things they loved about the site on Thursday, and I couldn’t help but think of all the hilarious tweets that have become lodged in my brain over the years.
Most of the tweets are intentionally funny, but there are a few in this collection that weren’t intended to be humorous—like the time Naomi Wolf invoked Belfast in the 1970s as a tranquil time. Or the time that Jordan Peterson quoted his own tweet, as if to pick a fight with himself about abusing prescription drugs.
Why 140? That’s the maximum number of characters you were allowed to use before Twitter expanded to 280 characters. And rumor has it that Musk is looking to expand the character count even further at some point.
Obviously this isn’t a scientifically determined list and your favorite tweet may not be on it. Which is why internet comments can sometimes be wonderful. Share your favorites. Because we might not have much time left before Twitter is gone forever. Or, at the very least, no longer what Twitter was before a petulant billionaire took it over.
Obviously this list also includes my own biases, whether it comes to humor or even just the fact that I’m a dumb American who’s only fluent in English. I’ve tried to link out to the creator of each tweet, but many are from deleted accounts or the tweets themselves have been deleted for one reason or another—a great reminder that nothing lasts forever, even on the internet.
There’s plenty of what the kids call blue humor in here, so proceed at your own risk. There’s nothing R-rated or graphic but if you don’t want your boss catching you looking at a dick joke or two, maybe hold off until after work.
