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Thursday, March 8, 2018
Anatomy of a viral tweet: Your most-often-uttered movie quotes
Posted By Scott Renshaw on March 8, 2018, 11:47 AM
It was a simple enough question. It also turned out to be a question that everyone has an answer to.
On Tuesday, many movie fans noted the 20th anniversary of The Big Lebowski, the 1998 Coen brothers comedy featuring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, bowling, white Russians and mistaken identity. Like many Coen brothers films, Lebowski is infinitely quotable, and people responded the film's anniversary by firing off favorite lines. Beloved bon mots and bits of juicy dialogue have a way of making their way into our everyday interactions, so I fired off the following to the Twitter-verse, just out of curiosity:
Two days and more than 4,000 engagements later, it was clear that folks had some thoughts.
While some people responded with favorite quotes of all kinds, including many far too long to ever work in casual conversation, it was clear that some great lines tend to lend themselves well to repeated situational use. A well-placed Ace Ventura-esque "Alrighty then" feels more versatile than "Nazis, I hate these guys" (though the latter feels far too applicable to 2018). As a result, despite many idiosyncratic choices, plenty of favorites emerged. Here are just a few of the repeat suggestions.
Then there was this entry, which captures the weird wonder of Twitter in its quintessence.
It's not so much the choice (from All the President's Men) that was noteworthy, though it does seem perpetually relevant nowadays. It's the fact that in a tweet thread about the most quotable movies of all time, a member of Spinal Tap chimed in.
So what infinitely re-quotable lines have we still not heard about? Remember, though: That's just, like, your opinion, man.
On Tuesday, many movie fans noted the 20th anniversary of The Big Lebowski, the 1998 Coen brothers comedy featuring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, bowling, white Russians and mistaken identity. Like many Coen brothers films, Lebowski is infinitely quotable, and people responded the film's anniversary by firing off favorite lines. Beloved bon mots and bits of juicy dialogue have a way of making their way into our everyday interactions, so I fired off the following to the Twitter-verse, just out of curiosity:
Two days and more than 4,000 engagements later, it was clear that folks had some thoughts.
While some people responded with favorite quotes of all kinds, including many far too long to ever work in casual conversation, it was clear that some great lines tend to lend themselves well to repeated situational use. A well-placed Ace Ventura-esque "Alrighty then" feels more versatile than "Nazis, I hate these guys" (though the latter feels far too applicable to 2018). As a result, despite many idiosyncratic choices, plenty of favorites emerged. Here are just a few of the repeat suggestions.
Then there was this entry, which captures the weird wonder of Twitter in its quintessence.
It's not so much the choice (from All the President's Men) that was noteworthy, though it does seem perpetually relevant nowadays. It's the fact that in a tweet thread about the most quotable movies of all time, a member of Spinal Tap chimed in.
So what infinitely re-quotable lines have we still not heard about? Remember, though: That's just, like, your opinion, man.
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