About

Retire Bitch is an expression often used on Twitter to insult politicians and urge them to end their careers. It is used similarly to other online colloquialisms such as Delete Your Account or kill yourself.

Origin

On March 3rd, 2013, Danny Devito tweeted^[1] "Antonin Scalia retire bitch", referring to the late United States Supreme Court Justice. The tweet has gained over 5,500 retweets in four years.

Spread

Devito's tweet quickly became has become a favorite of Weird Twitter. However, it wasn't until the 2016 United States Presidential Election that it grew into a popular phrase to tweet at various people, particularly politicians, one doesn't like. One of the earliest examples came from @cushbomb^[2] of Chapo Trap House, who on November 10th tweeted at various democrats and political opinion writers "retire bitch" (shown below).

The phrase appeared with increasing frequency over the following four months, generally tweeted at old white men in government, and particularly those involved in a scandal. For example, after it was discovered that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had apparently lied under oath during his Senate confirmation when he denied he had been in contact with Russian diplomats during the election (he had in fact met with two ambassadors), Twitter saw a sharp uptick in "Jeff Sessions retire bitch" tweets.

In his piece on the phrase, New York Magazine's^[3] Brian Feldman theorized that the phrase has grown in frequency among left-leaning Weird Twitter since the election because like Scalia, many important members of the United States government are currently elderly old, white, and conservative.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References