About

Hidden Replies is a feature available on the social media website Twitter that allows users to hide replies to their posts. The hidden replies can still be accessed by viewers by pressing an icon at the bottom right corner of the tweet. Due to hidden replies often containing explicit content and roasts, deliberately checking out hidden replies became a prevalent practice on Twitter in the early 2020s with quote tweets urging to open hidden replies under the quoted tweet often going viral.

Origin

On November 11th, 2019, Twitter enabled the "Hidden Replies" feature to all its users globally.^[1] The feature allows users to hide unwanted replies to their tweets. The tweets remain publicly available, but can only be accessed by pressing an icon in the bottom right corner of the tweet.

The button has since been used to hide various undesired replies, including pornography, explicit content, roasts and counterarguments.

On October 29th, 2019, shortly before the feature was made globally available, Twitter^[2] user @Alisaie_txt posted the earliest viral post about it, commenting on a possible reverse psychology effect that prompts users to press the button. The tweet gained over 3,100 retweets and 13,100 likes in four years (shown below).

Spread

Starting in early 2020, quote tweet posts inviting users to check the hidden replies in the quoted tweet started going viral on Twitter. For example, on January 27th, 2020, Twitter^[3] user @milkinhisbag made a tweet inviting users to see hidden replies to a tweet by Boston Market, with the post gaining over 1,700 retweets and 14,300 likes in three years (shown below, left). On March 5th, 2020, Twitter^[4] user @Haurmeya posted about a humorous hidden reply to an I Don't Wanna Be Bread meme that gained over 6,300 retweets and 31,900 likes in three years (shown below, right).

On March 21st, 2020, Twitter^[5][6] account @reactjpg archived two reaction images in which the Hidden Replies button is superimposed over Stephen A. Smith and Lil Uzi Vert (shown below, left and right). The images saw extensive use on Twitter as reactions to tweets containing explicit content in their hidden replies.

In the following years, multiple tweets warning against checking out hidden replies in the Don't Google, reverse-psychological manner or, in contrast, inviting to check out hidden replies went viral online. Commenting about hidden replies has been an engagement bait method used by multiple popular Twitter accounts such as @kirawontmiss^[7][8] and @dinosaurs1969,^[9] who by writing about hidden replies baited users into leaving replies worthy of hiding (examples shown below, left and right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References