About

Carp Tweets is a self-replicating tweet featuring an image of a carp being held in a hand. In December 2020, the tweet received viral spread, helping promote the spread of self-replicating tweets as a format.

Origin

On December 18th, 2020, Twitter user @dm4uz3^[1] posted a self-replicating tweet utilizing the conversational ads tweet promotion function. The tweet containing an image of a carp being held in a hand^[2] and a "tweet #carp" button which allowed mobile users to post the exact copy of the tweet (shown below, left). At that time, on the desktop version of Twitter, the button is replaced with a link for a Wikipedia^[2] entry for carp, which was later fixed (shown below, right).

Within 20 minutes, @dm4uz3 promoted^[3] the tweet on Twitter.

According to @dm4uz3,^[7][8] the post was inspired by Bingus self-replicating tweet, originally posted by Twitter^[9] user @koopashi on November 25th, 2020.

Spread

In the following hours, carp tweet witnessed an exponential spread on Twitter (example video^[4] shown below).

Within one hour of being posted, "carp" reached^[5] Twitter trends in the United Kingdom with over 65,600 tweets posted (image shown below, left). Within two hours, "carp" accumulated^[6] over 206,000 tweets (image shown below, right).

The viral spread of carp tweets inspired fan art, memes and meta jokes.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References