Overview

Meltdown May refers to an unofficial annual observance that celebrities and popular Twitter accounts seem to attract controversy as a result of their tweets and comments in the month of May and draw further attention to themselves as they argue with their critics.

Background

The first Meltdown May was May of 2015 and was started by user @Chump_Dick.^[1] There was a Meltdown May Twitter account associated with the event at the time, though it has since been deleted. The event was inspired in part by Steak-umm drafting rules for interacting with the company on social media after getting trolled in 2014^[2]

Developments

There were scattered references to "Meltdown May" on Twitter over the following two years: for example, in 2016, Twitter users^[3] suspected Nate Silver might "win" Meltdown May for tweeting about the 2016 United States Presidential Election (shown below, left). In 2017, Kurt Eichenwald's Hentai Thread was considered an example of Meltdown May, though it happened in early June of that year.^[4] The unofficial event began gaining more attention in 2018: that year, Mel Magazine^[4] posted an explainer for the event, citing early May 2018 events such as Kanye West saying slavery was a 'choice' and Ross Douthat tweeting a thread about incels (shown below, right) as examples of Meltdown May 2018.

In 2019, Meltdown May contenders included ProJared after the scandal with his wife, and Theresa May for resigning as Prime Minister during the month (example shown below, left).^[5] The Washington Post^[6] covered Meltdown May 2020, citing multiple celebrity scandals on social media that occurred during the month, including Lana Del Rey's 'A Question For The Culture' post (example shown below, right).

In May of 2021, multiple commenters agreed that Eve Barlow was the main character of Meltdown May for her consistent Zionist posting, culminating in her writing a piece in which she bemoaned mass replies of "Eve Fartlow" to her posts as a "social media pogrom."^[7]

Search Interest

External References