Don't @ Me

About

Don't @ Me is a slang expression used by internet users that usually accompanies a hot take they make, implying they are not interested in arguing about their controversial opinion. On many social media platforms, typing “@” in front of someone’s username is a way to tag them in a post, typically notifying them they’ve been tagged. This phrase commonly appears on Twitter but has since spread to other sites and social media platforms.

Origin

The exact first use of the phrase is unknown, but it dates back to at least 2007 where it originated on Twitter. On March 28th, 2007, Twitter^[1] user ChrisPirillo used the phrase in a tweet that said, “dont @ me – e or d me instead – otherwise i will never see your comments – read my previous twitter – t9ing from pocket ie” (shown below).

Spread

On January 29th, 2017, Urban Dictionary^[2] user lol2038 added the term to the site, defined as “Don't @ me is a phrase on Twitter when you say something and you don't want people to respond directly to you. They can retweet, like, etc. but don't respond directly because you don't care what people have to say about your opinion.” The definition (seen below) received nearly 1,700 likes and 100 dislikes.

Usage of the term exists primarily on Twitter, and the social media platform is largely responsible for its spread. One such example was tweeted by Twitter^[3] user Manny_Official on June 15th, 2018 (shown below, left), receiving over 4,300 likes and 406 retweets and comments. On October 29th, 2019, Twitter^[4] user MikeJohnson1_ also used the phrase in their tweet (shown below, right), where it received nearly 1,000 likes.

The phrase also appears in music, such as rapper JME’s song “Don't @ Me,” which was uploaded to YouTube^[5] on March 21st, 2015, by user Cogsy, receiving over 450,000 views and 3,000 likes (seen below, left). On May 2nd, 2019, WORLDSTARHIPHOP uploaded another song by the same name from rapper Jay Critch to its YouTube^[6] (seen below, right), receiving over 7 million views and 105,000 likes.

On August 16th, 2017, Redditor^[7] abcdef-G asked “What does "don't @ me" in a Reddit-comment mean?” on the /r/OutOfTheLoop subreddit, and the top replay answered, “If someone makes a bold statement and then says, ‘don't @ me,’ they're basically saying don't try to make a comment or conjecture of that statement.” On September 30th, 2018, a Quora^[8] user asked “Why do people say don't @me? What does this mean? Where did it come from?” The top reply, from user Ben Alabaster, said:

Online: Stop tagging me in your posts. Offline (IRL = In real life): Don’t talk to me. It comes from online. When Twitter came along, you tagged someone in a Tweet by adding an @me in front of their username. The act of tagging them provided a link for other people to connect to the tagged users public profile as well as notifying the tagged user that they’ve been tagged. Gradually other platforms started doing this. Now people have started using it colloquially to either mean text me, message me on Facebook, or some other form of text communication or don’t @me to mean don’t message me or talk to me.

Search Interest

External References