What's A Useless Fact About X?

About

What's A Useless Fact About X refers to a trend that was popularized on Twitter in January 2023 in which several posters challenged the site's users to name an esoteric fact they know about a specific medium. In the latter half of January, prominent examples of viral tweets about useless facts included invitations to tweet useless facts about video games and animation, among other topics.

Origin

On January 15th, 2023, Twitter user @SuperPodSaga,^[1] the Twitter account for a podcast of the same name, tweeted an invitation for users to tweet "useless" video game facts they knew (shown below). The tweet gained over 17,000 quote tweets in two weeks as thousands of users responded to the prompt.

Spread

Over the following weeks, numerous Twitter users responded to the prompt throughout January 2023. Some prominent responses to @SuperPodSaga's tweet include a response from @ChristinaTasty^[2] on January 22nd about The Godfather that gained over 700 retweets and 9,500 likes in one week (shown below, left) and a response from @saltandbrepper^[3] also that day about Oblivion that gained over 7,200 retweets and 66,000 likes in the same time (shown below, right).

The success of the video games-themed prompt soon inspired similar tweets about other genres in subsequent days. One Twitter user introduced a thread asking for animation facts. Though the original tweet has since been deleted, esoteric facts about animation soon flooded Twitter. For example, user @Serp022 posted a fact about Invader Zim on January 26th, gaining over 1,800 retweets and 15,000 likes in one day (shown below, top). On January 25th, user @StevenVargasArt posted a fact about a The Proud Family scene, gaining over 10,000 retweets and 74,000 likes in two days (shown below, bottom).

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References