"Please don't write something snarky"

Submission 27,085

Part of a series on Weird Twitter. [View Related Entries]

About

"Please Don't Write Something Snarky" refers to a series of sarcastic jokes mocking a tweet by comedian Mike Birbiglia where he used the phrase as a caption to a picture of first lady Michelle Obama hugging former president George W. Bush.

Origin

On September 25th, 2016, Birbiglia tweeted a screenshot of a New York Times headline that read "For Some, Bush-Obama Rapport Recalls a Lost Virture: Political Civility."^[1] Birbiglia, struck by the headline and the picture of the Obama family and Bush family acting friendly, attempted to express his genuine emotional response to the photo by captioning the screenshot, "This is powerful. I'm sorry, but it is. Please don't write something snarky."

Spread

Birbiglia deleted the tweet following a mass amount of replies from Twitter users reminding him of Bush's disastrous foreign policies and various dangerous mistakes as president.^[2] Nevertheless, the tweet inspired hundreds of sarcastic variations where Twitter users took Birbiglia's caption and applied it to bizarre and silly photos, including Loss.jpg, ^[3] a screenshot of He-man,^[4] Sonic the Hedgehog, ^[5] the first 2016 presidential debate, ^[6] and many more. That day, The Daily Dot^[2] and New York Magazine^[7] covered the spread of the joke.