About

Twitter Description Guy refers to jokes made about the plight of the employee at Twitter tasked with providing context on trending hashtags and topics on the site. Many of the jokes imagine him as beleaguered after trying to explain frivolous topics trending on the site. In many jokes, the man is depicted using the Coraline Dad image.

Origin

On September 1st, 2020, Twitter announced it would be adopting a new system to help clarify trending topics.^[1] Words on the trending bar would feature descriptions explaining the general gist of why something was trending, and clicking the trending topic would take you to a curated list of tweets relevant to the discussion. The first post to poke fun at the "Twitter Description Guy" was posted October 20th, 2020 by user @tubbohoney,^[2] who used the Coraline dad image to imagine the employee having to write a description for another Corpse Husband trending topic (shown below).

Spread

Over the following months, jokes about the plight of the Twitter description guy grew more popular alongside trends users felt were frivolous. For example, on January 5th, 2020, user @sunsetkarl^[3] tweeted a picture of Coraline's Dad to symbolize the Twitter Description Guy writing about why Panic! at the Disco singer Brendon Urie was trending (users were blaming him for historical atrocities he didn't commit), gaining over 1,000 retweets and 13,000 likes (shown below, left). User @702Sicario^[4] posted a joke about the Twitter Description Guy reading about the Armie Hammer Controversy, gaining over 460 likes (shown below, right).

Thanks to the numerous descriptions Twitter has provided since implementing their policy, the hashtag #ThankYouTwitterDescriptionGuy has been used to voice appreciation for the service providing context on numerous trending topics. User @coucou_lou^[5] wrote #ThankYouTwitterDescriptionGuy about descriptions regarding One Direction topics, gaining over 40 retweets and 240 likes (shown below, left). User @SnazzyNova^[6] used the hashtag to discuss the Twitter Description Guy talking about Dream on the platform, gaining over 260 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References