#AskJesus

Submission 6,084

About

#AskJesus is a hashtag that was originally designated by the English Premiere League football club Manchester City for a live Q&A session on Twitter with its star midfielder and Spanish professional soccer player Jesús Navas. Upon its introduction, however, the hashtag became a target of various jokes and humorous questions aimed at Jesus Christ, due to the apparent proximity in the spelling of their names.

Background

On July 28th, 2014, the official Twitter account for the Manchester City Football Club^[1] tweeted out a request for questions for Spanish soccer player Jesus Navas, asking Twitter users to tag their questions with the hashtag #AskJesus.

Within two minutes of the Football Club's original tweet, Twitter user Prenticee_x^[3] sent out a tweet with the hashtag featuring a biblical reference obviously jokingly posing a question to Jesus Christ, not Jesus Navas.

Notable Developments

Media Coverage

Also on July 28th, The Huffington Post^[4] published a round-up of tweets using the hashtag in an article titled “Manchester City’s #AskJesus Twitter Q&A Descends Into Farce.” That same day, the hashtag was covered by many British and American news sites, including The Independent^[5] and NBC Sports^[6]. In less than 24 hours, the hashtag^[2] was tweeted out over 17,000 times.

Notable Examples

Derivative: #AskLamps

Also on July 28th, approximately four hours after Manchester City launched the hashtag #AskJesus, the official Twitter account for the New York City Football Club^[7] sent out a tweet asking Twitter users for questions for English soccer player Frank Lampard asking them to use the hashtag #AskLamps.

Twitter users quickly used the hashtag to jokingly ask questions of the home accesory rather than the athlete. In less than 24 hours the hashtag^[8] was tweeted out over 2,000 times. The same day the hashtag was covered by Buzzfeed^[9] and Bleacher Report.^[10]