Twitter!
It’s the one app on your phone where you can type in a single sentence and 30 seconds later find yourself at war with half the world.
It’s … not great. And while the company itself spent the year helping spread ethnic cleansing in Asia, obfuscating about its algorithms in front of Congress, and shedding users like a million snakes simultaneously molting, it dropped one excellent new feature that its worst users adopted with the kind of savvy digital literacy you typically only see in today’s extremely online youths: getting ratioed to hell and back.
Ratioed, for the uninitiated, is when a person’s take on the site is so bad that the number of replies to it telling how they’ve fucked up far outpace the people retweeting and liking it in support. According to Merriam-Webster, ratioed only refers to tweets that receive mostly negative or critical replies. Although the concept originated in 2017, it was only in 2018 that the site’s truly terrible tweeters’ most abhorrent thoughts got the tens of thousands of replies they really deserved.
Here are 10 ratioed tweets of 2018.
1) Todd Starnes on the Parkland children
America’s status quo on gun laws is perhaps the real unknown source of inertia that’s secretly holding the universe together, but after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed, it seemed like reform might actually happen. It hit its zenith during a publicly televised town hall where some of the children spoke down to a U.S. senator for supporting the National Rifle Association.
Todd Starnes, a person with a Twitter account, did not like that.
Pay for his or her college, as he or she is obviously worthy of investment in their future.
— tripgreat (@tripgreat) February 23, 2018
2) Jim Jordan wants to find the real killers
By most reasonable accounts, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) witnessed rampant sexual abuse in his time as a wrestling coach at Ohio State. At best he willfully ignored it, and at worst he participated in a Penn State-style cover-up.
And while that story was all over the national discourse, Jim Jordan was worried about a cover-up. Somewhere else.
https://twitter.com/danicalynn1988/status/1019804695945084928
The correct response.
3) Fox News tweets a breaking Jamie Lee Curtis scoop
Jamie Lee Curtis is a staunch public advocate for the responsible use of guns by Americans and that upset Fox News, because in her latest movie she held a gun.
I’ve got news for you. Despite popular myth, Lionel Ritchie does not, in fact, party all night long, just as Jamie Lee Curtis, here seen ACTING A CHARACTER with different beliefs. Good grief.
— Jake (@JakeGGodfrey) October 11, 2018
(Fox does deserve credit however for recently leaving Twitter forever, somehow proving itself to be the only sane actor on this planet.)
4) State senator wonders how Robert E. Lee should be remembered
People (Chris McDaniel) are wondering (they really aren’t) in this current climate (or all the time), how generals in the Confederacy (people who fought to keep slavery) should be remembered (as bad)?
Looks like this one backfired on ya.
— Stephen Lusk (@LuskBrand) August 17, 2018
5) Eddie Scarry does a tweet
Poor Eddie Scarry. The man is just a horny public troll who wants to publish content for a national news outlet in peace. But for 30 short minutes, he was the most red-assed man on Twitter, after he posted a creep shot of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez so he could tell the world he didn’t think she looked all that poor.
Scarry, after what might be the swiftest ratio in Twitter history—with over 12,000 people replying to his opinion in under 10 minutes—claimed that every single one of those people replying to him had somehow misinterpreted the intentions of his tweet.
(The intention of his tweet was to be a shithead. Everyone got it.)
Oh, does @eScarry think he can delete his misogyny without an apology?
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 16, 2018
I don’t think so. You’re a journalist – readers should know your bias. pic.twitter.com/2KJuiPsUR2
6) ‘Free books should not be free’ take
Amazon charges people for books. Libraries don’t. Should we hire a company that charges people for books to replace the service that gives people the books for free?
We were going to chime in… but it looks like you guys have it covered.
— L.A. Public Library (@LAPublicLibrary) July 23, 2018
7) Trump defends his stance on Russia
One facet of being extremely online is that as a frequent poster, you’re constantly subjected to being ratioed, especially if you’re waking up every single morning and spouting off the most nonsensical bullshit that pops into your head without any discernible thought to your over 30 million followers.
The president honestly gets ratioed every single day, and at least we can respect that it hasn’t curbed his desire to keep posting through it.
But his claim that no one was tougher than him on Russia was met with many, many responses.
LOL
— carter “cool girl” cruise (@CarterCruise) July 27, 2018
8) ForAmerica freaks out over a same-sex kiss
*Endless sigh*
https://twitter.com/tomhammel50/status/1067224149028941824
9) Paul Ryan celebrates Father’s Day
When America was beset with a border crisis, after our president implemented a draconian family separation policy that split up kids and families who tried to enter America, locking those children in cages, the Washington ruling class continued going about their day, doing their typically carefree bourgeoisie things.
Like celebrating Father’s Day.
Come on, man.
— Tony Perez (@TonyDPerez) June 17, 2018
10) Brooklyn BBQ is taking over the world.
No, this was the worst tweet.
where’s the rest of it?
— One Man, Two Cats (@brightersideof) March 5, 2018
Please keep posting in 2019!!!!!
