Me: :( / ASCII Sparkle

About

Me: :( / ASCII Sparkle refers to a copypasta popular on Twitter in which a person types "Me: :(", then posts ASCII Art resembling a starry night sky with an emoji in the middle, then posts "me: :)" at the end. The emoji in the night sky is meant to represent the thing that makes them happy in sad times.

Origin

On February 15th, 2019, Twitter user @sydophile^[1] made a post which read "me: :(" then featured ASCII art of the moon in the night sky. The tweet gained over 101,000 retweets and 244,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

The format began growing much more popular two weeks later, when it grew less focused on astrology and began incorporating a wide variety of topics. Some popular examples include a February 26th post by @xoxokatiejo that incorporated iced coffee, gaining over 18,000 retweets and 57,000 likes (shown below, left). User @Jacindancer made a similar post using emoji to represent Disneyland, gaining over 14,000 retweets and 47,000 likes (shown below, right).

The format then expanded to include purely emoji art. For example, Twitter user @fatcherhorowitz made ASCII art representing a local preschool walking in the city, gaining over 11,000 retweets and 75,000 likes (shown below, left) while user @dubstepfordads made an example about ducks in a park that gained over 8,400 retweets and 51,000 likes (shown below, right). The jokes were covered by Daily Dot.^[2]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References