FirstName BunchOfNumbers

About

FirstName BunchOfNumbers or First Name Bunch Of Numbers refers to a catchphrase used to describe a phenomenon that occurs on the social media website Twitter. The phrase reflects the commonly held belief that default Twitter handles using the format "First Name" followed by a series of digits are most likely conservative Bot accounts.

Origin

The specific phrase "FirstName BunchOfNumbers" originated from a tweet^[1] by user @wuooods on April 19th, 2020. The user tweeted, "Hello my name is Firstname Bunchofnumbers and i have some incredibly shitty opinions," and received over 20,000 likes and 5000 retweets in two years (seen below).

Spread

On August 31st, 2020, tech writer Darius Kazemi published a blog post on his website "Tiny Subversions"^[2] with the title "On Twitter usernames with lots of numbers." The article discussed the reasons as to why there was a sudden uptick in Twitter users with the username format "FirstName BunchOfNumbers," outlining a 2017 change in Twitter account policies. An excerpt from the entry reads, "The thing is, since at least as far back as December 2017, the Twitter signup process has not allowed you to choose your own username! It instead gives you a name based on your first and last name, plus eight numbers on the end. You aren't prompted to pick a more distinctive username after that, and you can change it but you need to figure out how to do it yourself. (The December 2017 date was confirmed to me privately by someone who works at Twitter Design.)"

On December 19th, 2020, Twitter^[3] user @Carolin64723572 posted a tweet announcing Tier 4 quarantine for London a few days ahead of Christmas 2020. The announcement was made from reputed journalist Caroline Wheeler's^[4] temporary account, the username of which followed the FirstName BunchOfNumbers format, leading people to question the validity of her claim (seen below).

On May 14th, 2022, Parag Agrawal, the CEO of Twitter, posted a thread addressing concerns about the supposed saturation of Bot accounts on Twitter. He used the term "FirstNameBunchOfNumbers" in a tweet^[5] that received over 2000 likes and over 200 retweets (seen below)

By 2022, the use of the phrase "FirstName BunchOfNumbers" had entered Twitter users vocabularies as a way to refer to Bot accounts or simply to refer to older, less tech savvy Twitter users with inflammatory opinions. The screenshot of the original tweet by user @wuooof is often used in response to tweets made by FirstName BunchOfNumbers accounts. Twitter users have also come to associate accounts with a username following this format with conservative ideas. For instance, Twitter^[6] user @GidMK posted an edit of the original @wuooof tweet to comment on the saturation of supposed Bot accounts promoting the use of horse-dewormer Ivermectin as a Covid-19 cure.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References