Nihilist Arby's

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Part of a series on Gimmick Accounts. [View Related Entries]

About

Nilihst Arby's is a novelty Twitter account featuring bleak, pessimistic tweets about the meaninglessness of life and inevitability of death with unenthusiastic recommendations for the fast food restaurant chain Arby's.

Origin

On January 14th, 2015, the @nihilist_arbys^[1] Twitter feed was launched by writer Brendan Kelly,^[11] which posted several bleak tweets recommending Arby's as a fast food destination (shown below). In the first three months, the feed gained over 50,000 followers.

Spread

On January 29th, Twitter user @warlick^[2] posted a mock Arby's promotional ad using copy from a Nihilist Arby's tweet (shown below).

On the following day, the pop culture blog AV Club^[6] published an article titled "Gaze into the Beef ’n Cheddar abyss with the Nihilist Arby’s Twitter account." On February 3rd, Redditor coffee_guy submitted the Twitter account to the /r/nightvale^[3] subreddit. On February 8th, the food blog What's Nick Eating^[8] reported that the account had been suspended. On February 10th, @nihilist_arbys resumed tweeting (shown below).^[9]

On February 13th, Ad Week^[4] reported that @nihilist_arbys had a follower "engagement rate" of 113 percent, compared to 4.3 percent for the official Arby's feed. On February 19th, the Nihilist Arby's Facebook^[7] page was launched. On March 30th, Redditor tazman886 submitted a link to the Twitter account to the /r/nihilism^[10] subreddit. On April 25th, Jezebel^[5] published an article about the Twitter feed.