About

Meet the Shadow Team is an image macro series based on a tweet about the staff of Shadow, the tech company behind the defective application designed to tally votes during the 2020 Iowa Caucus.

Origin

On January 17th, 2019, Twitter ^[1] user @taraemcg tweeted, "Meet the Shadow team." They included an image of four people holding laptops. The post received more than 900 comments, 860 likes and 415 retweets in a little over one year (shown below).

Spread

On February 4th, 2020, it was reported that the app designed by Shadow for the purpose of tallying votes at the Iowa caucus caused issues, leaving the results inconclusive.^[2]

That day, people began sharing the image and mocking the team online. Twitter^[3] user @mattysmiff tweeted, "Why was a UCB improv team entrusted with our democracy." The tweet received more than 13,000 likes and 1,000 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, left).

Twitter^[4] user @momerather responded to the tweet with an edited version of the team picture, replacing their heads with the cast of the television series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The post received more than 265 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below, center).

Following the post, others began sharing variations of the format, keeping the "Meet the Shadow team" caption and replacing the image underneath, generally including an image of fictional characters known for hacking or mischief.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References