Feeling Down? Click the X

About

Feeling Down? Click the X refers to tweets that invite people who are feeling down to click on them, typically using an emoji as the object, therefore luring them into seeing the poster's replies to their own tweet. These may range from images meant to cheer people up to shitposts and trolling. The format, particularly the "Feeling Down? Click the Star" version, achieved virality on Twitter in late January 2023.

Origin

On October 26th, 2022, the Twitter^[1] gimmick account @dailykandake posted the earliest discovered tweet containing a moon emoji surrounded by stars, captioned, "feeling down? click on the moon." Upon opening the thread, a user would see a collection of images of Genshin Impact character Candace meant to cheer them up (tweet and top reply shown below). The tweet received over 240 retweets and 1,400 likes in three months.

Spread

The format did not see spread until late January 2023. On January 28th, Twitter^[2] user @ravenLVJY posted a similar tweet, which, upon opening the thread, would show images of internet personality Wilbur Soot. The post (shown below, left) gained over 190 retweets and 980 likes in nine days. On January 30th, Twitter^[3] user @AsleepKat posted another thread that opened into images and GIFs of Kirby. The tweet gained over 4,000 retweets and 19,800 likes in one week (shown below, right).

The viral spread of the Kirby post prompted more similar threads posted in the following days, with some users subverting the trend. For example, on January 31st, Twitter^[4] user @cooIboobs posted a thread subverting the trend that gained over 1,400 retweets and 17,500 likes in one week (shown below, left). On February 3rd, 2023, the gimmick Twitter^[5] account @heavyfortres made a tweet that accumulated over 5,900 retweets and 62,000 likes in three days (shown below, right).

The trend maintained popularity on Twitter through early February 2023.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References