Catturd

About

Catturd (or @catturd2) is a conservative Twitter influencer with over 1.3 million followers (as of January 2023) who Twitter CEO Elon Musk has replied to and interacted with multiple times, sparking widespread discussion on the platform and beyond. Catturd is also a novelist.

Career

Catturd began posting on Twitter in September 2018. Over time, Catturd's account became prominent in rightwing conspiracy theories and anti-vaxx discourse. Catturd, who tweets on average several times a day, has been involved in practically every rightwing online culture war skirmish, commenting on all current events. For example, Catturd posted about the 2023 U.S. gas stove ban hoax (seen below) on January 12th, 2023, earning over 33,000 likes in a little over a week.^[1]

Catturd first came to widespread prominence in 2020, when then-President Donald Trump retweeted the account at least seven times, which Catturd celebrated in a December 1st, 2020 tweet (seen below, left), which received over 42,000 likes.^[5] Catturd had shared confirmed lies and accusations about election fraud in the 2020 election, including one about Rudy Giuliani and a "mountain of evidence" which Trump retweeted on December 1st, garnering Catturd over 66,000 likes and a lot of criticism, including from @Patterico (seen below, right).^[6] In May of 2021, Catturd parlayed this fame into a Fox News interview.^[7]

Online History

Catturd is mostly a poster on Twitter, but also maintains a website called ilovecatturd.com and has written two novels, titled The Adventures of Cowfart and Rabbitskin.^[4]

Catturd and Elon Musk

Following Elon Musk's Twitter acquisition in 2022, Catturd expressed doubt about whether the new owner would defend the interests of conservative political influencers on the platform, tweeting accusations that the algorithm selectively policed their tweets on October 27th, 2022 (seen below). Elon Musk replied directly to this tweet, saying he would look into the matter, and Catturd tweeted that their follower count had increased by 7,000 that same day.^[2]

Between October 27th, 2022 and October 30th, 2022, Catturd's total number of followers increased from around 840,000 to over 940,000 according to Trendsmap.^[3] The more Catturd interacted with Elon Musk, usually by complaining about Twitter's algorithm or content moderation, the higher their follower count became. This repeated the pattern which Catturd had established with Trump: interaction with a more powerful rightwing influencer offered Catturd more followers and more engagement. By January of 2023, Catturd's follower count had increased to 1.3 million, and they had cemented themselves as a reliable reply guy to Musk.^[6]

External References