Today's Tea

Submission 10,532

Part of a series on The Tea. [View Related Entries]

About

Today's Tea refers to a phrasal template some use to express a hot take or controversial opinion. In the format, people share these views inside of an ASCII Art depiction of a steaming cup of tea.

Origin

The earliest known example of the format posted by Twitter ^[1] user @bivalkryi on May 23rd, 2018 (shown below). In this instance, they posted "Loki deserved better," presumably referring to the character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe series of superhero films, as the "tea."

Spread

The following day, Twitter^[2] user @legendtrench tweeted, "Josh is just as talented as Tyler." The tweet received more than 545 retweets and 1,300 likes in less than one year (shown below, left). Several days later, Twitter^[3] user @DailyBrooklyn99 tweeted, "b99 is 100 times better than big bang theory," comparing the two American television comedies The Big Bang Theory and Brooklyn 99.

Over the next year, the format continued to evolve, adjusting and editing the size and shape of the teacup. In February 2019, the format reemerged with viral popularity. On February 6th, 2019, Twitter^[4] user @jshelat1 tweeted, "Grad students should be paid a livable wage for their hard work." The post received more than 2,100 retweets and 10,000 likes in less than one week (shown below, right).

Two days later, Twitter^[5] user @spazful tweeted, "Ur not sensitive, he's just a fucking dick to you." The post was among the format's most popular, receiving more than 100,000 retweets and 300,000 likes in less than one week (shown below).

On February 11th, PopBuzz^[6] published a listicle about the format.