About

Checks Notes is a phrase used in tweets which make a joke about contradictory pieces of information. In the set up, a person opens with a statement as though they were presenting a piece of information to a crowd, writes "checks notes" in asterisks, suggesting that they're confirming the ridiculousness of the statement they're about to make, and ends with a contradictory piece of information.

Origin

The first tweet to use this format was tweeted December 25th, 2018, by user @Sween, gaining 2 retweets and 10 likes.^[1]

Spread

The format began seeing more popular use, in the mid 2010s. Some popular examples from that time include tweets by @jonnysun^[2] posted June 7th, 2013 that gained over 600 retweets and 6,100 likes (shown below, left). On July 17th, 2017, Dril tweeted a variation on the joke that gained over 1,000 retweets and 5,100 likes^[3] (shown below, right).

Slate^[4] argued in 2018 that the meme saw an increase in use following Donald Trump's election as people used it to discuss various contradictory pieces of information in the Trump administration. For example, it was used August 15th, 2018 by Vox.com^[5] in a tweet about Rick Perry (shown below, left). Slate also argued that the meme should die out because it was overdone and that it had sexist undertones. On June 4th, 2019, the meme was covered by Daily Dot,^[6] who also talked about its use in recent Game of Thrones discourse. For example, a tweet using the format posted by @bnlinden^[7] about the show's handling of female characters gained over 350 retweets and 1,200 likes (shown below, right). The phrase also has a page on TheFreeDictionary.^[8]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References