About

Length of Recording refers to a snowclone popular on Twitter in which a person posts what appears to be two audio files of two different lengths. The snowclone usually begins with a short audio file representing the length something important is discussed. The second audio file is usually much longer than the first and represents the length a much more frivolous topic is discussed.

Origin

Using the "right triangle" and "radio button" emoji, it is possible to make what appears to be an audio player for Twitter. On September 14th, 2016, @memearchives^[1] posted a prank tweet making it appear as though Twitter had unveiled an audio tweet feature (shown below).

The joke format began appearing in late June of 2017. On June 21st, Twitter user @eunseotrash^[2] posted a tweet about how much she loves K-Pop idol Eunseo of the group Cosmic Girls (shown below, left). On June 30th, @Salsizabeth^[3] posted a joke about her fandom for Sansa Stark of Game of Thrones (shown below, right). This appears to be the first instance of what would become the joke's most-used format.

Spread

The format began spreading through early July in fandoms. Some of the earliest popular examples refer to dramas in K-Pop fandoms. On July 2nd, @kyvnqsoo^[4] tweeted about Chanyeol of EXO and gained over 2,400 retweets and 1,700 likes (shown below, left). The following day, @twicespjm^[5] tweeted about Jae of DAY6 and gained over 2,400 retweets and 3,100 likes (shown below, right).

Popular tweets using the format began to grow more political in nature in the following days. @minimalisthue^[6] tweeted about gender relations in a tweet that gained over 27,000 retweets and 64,000 likes (shown below, left). @jaboukie^[7] tweeted about how "every national holiday is actually racist" and gained over 7,800 retweets and 28,000 likes (shown below, right). The spread of the jokes was covered by The Daily Dot.^[8]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References