12/18/20: carp
On the night of December 18th, 2020, a curious tweet appeared upon the Twitter timeline. It was a type of tweet that advertisers were able to make, an image with the option to tweet (usually) two options, often used for a type of poll that could get lots and lots of of engagement from people reposting it. But on this, there was only one option. There was only… carp.
My entire timeline was carp.
And this was when I knew I had to understand carp. In the earliest tens of minutes of carp, there were worries— could this steal your information? Was this dangerous? If it did, it was too late for most people, since it was simply too hard to resist the button labeled 'carp'. (There was no risk to this whatsoever. The creator, twitter user dm4uz3, simply used an old advertising tool for fun.)
When you click the "Tweet #carp" button, it brings you to a new tweet screen that, indeed, simply reads "carp" with the connected button for other people to tweet carp. Once you tweet carp, the image changes to a different image of a carp that links to the Wikipedia page for carp.
And thus, the memes could begin.
The "initial moment" of carp lasted for about two hours. It appeared on my timeline first at about , and the posts slowed down around . But oh, there were so many posts. Carp was a beautiful moment we all got to share at the tail end of 2020, an objectively horrible year.
Notably, since the carp post linked to the Wikipedia page for carp, people began editing the page. It was quickly locked so it couldn't be further vandalized by Twitter users having a good time.
A subplot of carp night was the fact that carp started trending. "Carp" was there, on the sidebar of Twitter.
But… suddenly… carp disappeared. No comment was made on it by anyone official, but it seems like it was removed manually. Which is not something I'd ever seen happen before!
But it's carp. Carp don't just go away. Carp are everywhere. So people started posting more tweets with #carp, specifically the hashtag, and guess what? That started trending instead.
And that's about where the story of carp ends. It fizzled out after that single night, but it's remembered fondly by the people who were there. Carp's main legacy is probably that this tweet format has continued to live on.
Carp was a success, by at least 4 metrics.
For the record, the tweet still exists! You can still tweet carp and experience the tweet itself. However, the creator decided to sell space on the carp tweet for advertising, so now there's other stuff on the post, turning it into a whole new shitpost. The new images on the tweet include Dave and Karkat from Homestuck making out, a square of Peepys from itemlabel (a silly online company primarily selling odd stuffed animals), Kankri from Homestuck in a sailor girl outfit, and an image of some guy on a couch with hard-to-read flaming text that says "Fiery Joker Productions".
There really wasn't any point to carp. It wasn't even some kind of marketing scheme by some large company, which was something people were more wary of than ever in 2020. It was just carp. It was a fun night we all got to share. I hope I've properly expressed the spirit of Carp Night with this. Sometimes, the Internet is still as fun and whimsical as it has the potential to be.
| Created | Last Updated |
| December 23rd, 2022 | February 13th, 2024 |