Vanishing Point (Your Memes Reviewed): #DeleteYourTwitterIf

The conditional clauses that come packaged with April 5th’s trending hashtag #DeleteYourTwitterIf are as varied as the reasons one might choose to delete one’s Twitter account even without the advice proffered by someone whose avatar is a close-up of their tramp stamp. With bass notes of generalized-turned-personal rage, it provides a perfect framework for passive-aggressive claims on digital turf, as users stuck with second-choice handles quickly discovered.

fromblueskies: #deleteyourtwitterif you’re using a name someone else wants and you never sign in. *cough* @blueskies *cough*

Not everyone is circling an unused account like a hungry buzzard, however. There is room in this bossy meme for tough love of an achingly specific type-for directives that, despite their open-ended formulations, seem to conjure an exact yet unnamed individual.

FuckYouuimPaidd: #DeleteYourTwitterIf Youu Got 13 Followers , But Youu followinq 894.

LoveKarleigh: #DeleteYourTwitterIf u weigh 500 lbs. and ur bio says u wanna be in the Porn industry.

We are not truly challenged until we attempt to parse the ironies, intentional and un-, that arise from rock-throwing undertaken by residents of the glass Internet. Musn’t they know what they are saying? Musn’t they know that, even if they know what they are saying, they look as if they don’t? These tweeters, we assume, have an incredibly fine grasp of meta-commentary:

Kelseyizbawlen: RT @toadspimp: #deleteyourtwitterif all of your tweets have a trending topic in them.

Tinit2winit: #deleteyourtwitterif you have no social life

bkLYN_b0MbShEll #deleteyourtwitterif yu dnt fukin tweet in English!! Wth is the point??

More mystic and less koan-like are the tweets that leak out of the digital sphere, touching upon a single offense as though it wholly characterizes the offender and describes their absolute value in a social network. They are submitting a rating to the public reputation market. Bearing no strong connection to web-bound behavior, these entries waft up out of the generic haze like mini-manifestos mailed to the editor of a failing local newspaper. They can only be read as masked invitations to group suicide:

01ade: #deleteyourtwitterif you smoke cigarettes

dharrison615: #deleteyourtwitterif you think the Cubs have a chance 2 win the World Series let alone the division this year…All about the White Sox baby

HS_JB #deleteyourtwitterif you’re a hater.

This bitter topic has quickly destabilized, leaving us cold and confused. It is, at heart, too mean to trend for long. But before it dies its young rock star death, is there no way to advance its every form at once? To simultaneously capture its smugness, needling tones, post-ironic stance, dizzying reflexivity and earnest Internet-cleansing effort in an instant of pure self-loathing masquerading as conventional narcissism?

GOONONSMASH: #deleteyourtwitterif you wanna be like me

RATINGS (characteristics rated on a negative to positive scale of -10 to 10):

Flexibility: 6.8
Insight: 3.2
Aesthetic: 4.4
Redundancy Potential: -10.0
Confusing To Outsiders: -7.4

Final Meme Score: -3

Miles Klee is looking at your Internet.