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'Not Wordle' Memes Flood Twitter After Corporate America Takes Notice Of The Trendy Social Game

January 28th, 2022 - 8:30 AM EST by Owen Carry

(Twitter / @Bassya17)

The mobile game Wordle seems to be everywhere these days, as in the green, grey, white and yellow emoji-squares encompassing everyone's Twitter feed. Wordle emoji tweets have become so saturated within the mainstream that they've inspired a counter-trend called Not Wordle tweets, where trolls and antagonists have started creating their own emojipastas unrelated to the game.

It started on December 27th when Twitter user modernmodron morphed a "funny Lil guy," out of the square emojis. The tweet blended into the rest of the Wordle tweets that day, causing a couple of viewers to stop and like, roughly 24 of them over the course of a month.

Going into January, more Twitter users hopped onto the trend, slowly building momentum. The trend reached peak engagement around Tuesday after a tweet from Twitter's Bassya17 received over 114,000 likes. Another viral tweet was posted on Weddnesday, which cemented the trend. Twitter's cogscimom was the culprit, who made a Not Wordle tweet of "just a Zoom class."

As the sight of emojis wore thin, Twitter users started posting more meta Not Wordles, attaching pictures that vaguely resembled stacked, square emojis. The pictures ranged from quilts and dresses to other games like Minesweeper or Celebrity Squares. Overall, this alluded to Wordle imagery having been burned into the average Twitter user's brain, now cursed to see square emojis in everything like Stockholm Syndrome.

Joining the hype were multiple companies and brands. This started on Wednesday when the Twitter account of Oreo cookies tweeted a Not Wordle. From there, social media managers across LinkedIn seemingly banded together to perform one of the largest corporate tweetstorms in recent memory. Pretty much all of these brand-based Not Wordles were posted in the same 24-hour window as if there'd been a gas leak in the algorithm.

Of course, with all social-media brand spams, there was a backlash that ensued. Many users cringed within the replies. However, this isn't to take away from the regular Twitter users who added to the trend. Their impressive, emoji creations referenced multiple fandoms, as well as conveyed numerous, humorous scenarios, like being the only one awake at 4 a.m. or sitting in a movie theater alone.

Following in the footsteps of other mobile-game meccas like Candy Crush and Flappy Bird, Wordle is now one step closer to "App-Store Hall of Fame." It's strange, really, how so many brands picked up on the Not Wordle trend, blatantly promoting a different company that they have nothing to do with. Hell, if the creator of iBeer is now living on a little orchard in Spain, it's curious to imagine where the Wordle people are vacationing right now.

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