What a time to be alive.
Shortly after 1 p.m. ET on April 5, 2016, the 102-year-old liberal magazine The New Republic tweeted “fuck me daddy” at Donald Trump’s verified Twitter account.
The off-color tweet went out while writer and poet Patricia Lockwood was helming the institutional Twitter account following her widely circulated outsider’s account of a recent Trump campaign rally for the magazine.
The tweet was quickly deleted, which drew nearly as much notice as the original message. Lockwood tweeted from the account that her tenure running @NewRepublic was up not long after, sparking speculation that the magazine pulled the plug.
well that was fun while it lasted
— Patricia Lockwood (@TriciaLockwood) April 5, 2016
Weird internet memes are kind of awkward to explain, but here goes: teens and other Weird Twitter users are fond of tweeting “fuck me daddy” as a reply to famous people’s tweets. It’s a fun game for a very particular kind of internet user – Pope Francis’ account is a favorite target – and unfunny or offensive to the rest.
@kath_krueger not a bit of it — it was the last thing I tweeted before I signed out!
— Patricia Lockwood (@TriciaLockwood) April 5, 2016
Reached on Twitter by TPM, Lockwood said her signing off was “not a bit” related to the tweet and that it was the last thing she tweeted before signing off. Lockwood told New York Magazine she hoped the billionaire would mistake the message for a quote of his own “and retweet it with extreme approbation,” something he’s done in the past.