Occasionally a completely frivolous meme goes viral on Twitter for no apparent reason and then dies away just as suddenly. And since, as is often said, all origins are obscure nobody really knows what sparked it (although some might have theories).
A good example of this phenomenon occurred this afternoon (mainly seemed to be east coast Aussies) with the rapid evolution of the #TUBWARS meme.
Now to put this in context there are groups called “TUBs” or Twitter Underground Brigades, where groups of tweeps meetup in real life and socialize. BTW, I’ve just updated the Twitter page on wikipedia to reflect the unwarranted exclusion of TUBs from that page.
For no known reason several new Twitter names were created:
@jpfTUB
@pfjTUB
@jpfTUB
@darthTUB
@egoTUB
@tweeterTUB
@reTUB
@tubbyTUB
and there are probably more by now …
Then whole lot of silliness happened (I went a bit LOLspearian with:”@kcarruthers cry havoc & let slip teh dawgs of #TUBWARS”) jokes were flying and everyone was being humourous. The whole thing went on for a few hours with enough traffic that the tag #TUBWARS trended on search & then the activity died away.
It is just like one of those times when the entire office picks up a joke or funny saying and runs around saying it all day. Again, Twitter reveals itself to be completely hostage to human nature.
UPDATE: Based on comment by Ben have found the spark to the entire thing was creation @fuSTUB a splinter movement against/out of (?) @STUB – and there is a summary of that traffic here