Bigolas Dickolas' "This Is How You Lose the Time War" Tweet

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Part of a series on Viral Marketing. [View Related Entries]

About

Bigolas Dickolas' This Is How You Lose the Time War Tweet refers to a viral book recommendation from Twitter user and Trigun anime stan account bigolas dickolas woIfwood (@maskofbun) in May 2023 that recommended the sci-fi book This Is How You Lose the Time War by authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. After the tweet was sent, bigolas dickolas woIfwood's followers purchased the book on Amazon en masse, causing This Is How You Lose the Time War to skyrocket to the best seller's list. The event akin to viral marketing led to many memes, fan art and viral discourse across social media in the days that followed.

History

On May 7th, 2023, Twitter^[1] user @maskofbun tweeted the cover of Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's book This Is How You Lose the Time War with a caption reading, "read this. DO NOT look up anything about it. just read it. it's only like 200 pages u can download it on audible it's only like four hours. do it right now i'm very extremely serious." Over the course of five days, the tweet gained roughly 138,100 likes (shown below).

Going into the next day, May 8th, 2023, the viral tweet started to earn retweets and quote retweets from various authors and book enthusiasts, according to some Twitter^[2] users in @maskofbun's replies. The viral buzz led to co-author of the book, Amal El-Mohtar, posting her own QRT^[3] on May 8th, 2023, gaining roughly 22,500 likes in four days (shown below, left). Later on May 8th, Twitter^[4] user @SravaniWrites tweeted a graph from Goodreads, showing a spike in the "book stats for This Is How You Lose the Time War." The QRT gained roughly 1,300 likes (shown below, right).

News Coverage

On May 10th, 2023, Gizmodo^[5] and Kotaku^[6] became the first news outlets to cover the story. Gizmodo^[5] stated, "sales of the book on Amazon skyrocketed, landing Time War into the site’s bestsellers list as the sixth most popular book on the platform as of writing." Gizmodo's article caused reactions on Twitter, such as a tweet sent by Twitter^[7] user @lep0ridae on May 10th, that included a passage labeled, "This is unironically the funniest opening paragraph on an article I have ever seen." The tweet received roughly 2,400 likes in two days (shown below).

Soon after Gizmodo, other outlets added to the news coverage, including Slate^[8] which interviewed co-author Amal El-Mohtar. Soon after Slate, Insider^[11] published an article in which they interviewed bigolas dickolas woIfwood.

Online Reaction And Memes

As news outlets started to cover the event on May 10th, various reactions and memes surfaced on Twitter about bigolas dickolas woIfwood's viral promotion. For instance, on May 10th, 2023, Twitter^[9] @tothedeaths edited a book award sticker onto the This Is How You Lose the Time War's cover that namedropped bigolas dickolas woIfwood, gaining roughly 13,100 likes in two days (shown below, left). Also, fan art started to emerge from the discourse, including a meme in a tweet sent by Twitter^[10] user @minaIots on May 10th, gaining roughly 14,000 likes in two days (shown below, right).