Twitter Sparkles

About

Twitter Sparkles, or "Twitter Stars," is a series of tweets that feature a photo mashup of a specific set of unicode stars next to an image that appears to be interacting with them.

Origin

The earliest known iteration of Twitter Sparkles was posted on March 29th, 2018 by Twitter^[1] user @naottri. The post (shown below) features a picture of person's hand holding a jar that's releasing stars into the sky. The image is captioned with the set of unicode stars. Within one week, the tweet received more than 83,000 retweets and 91,000 likes.

Spread

Three days later, on April 1st, Twitter^[2] user @saltydkdan tweeted an image from the anime television series Dragon Ball. The juxtaposition of the stars and image makes it appear as though the stars are coming out of the character's back. The post (shown below, left) received more than 131,000 retweets and 242,000 likes in five days.

On April 2nd, Twitter^[3] user @The_Lucbomber posted an image featuring Kirby appearing to breathe in the stars. The post (shown below, center) received more than 4,200 retweets and 9,200 likes in four days.

Two days later, the official Netflix Twitter^[4] account posted a variation featuring G.O.B. from the American television comedy Arrested Development. The post (shown below, right) received more than 3,800 retweets and 15,000 likes in two days.

Several media outlets covered the emergence of the meme, including The Daily Dot, ^[5] Select All,^[6] Mashable ^[7]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References