What's A Useless Fact About X?

About

What's A Useless Fact About X refers to a trend that was popularized on Twitter in January 2023 in which several posters challenged the site's users to name an esoteric fact they know about a specific medium. In the latter half of January, prominent examples of viral tweets about useless facts included invitations to tweet useless facts about video games and animation, among other topics.

Origin

On January 15th, 2023, Twitter user @SuperPodSaga,^[1] the Twitter account for a podcast of the same name, tweeted an invitation for users to tweet "useless" video game facts they knew (shown below). The tweet gained over 17,000 quote tweets in two weeks as thousands of users responded to the prompt.

Spread

Over the following weeks, numerous Twitter users responded to the prompt throughout January 2023. Some prominent responses to @SuperPodSaga's tweet include a response from @ChristinaTasty^[2] on January 22nd about The Godfather that gained over 700 retweets and 9,500 likes in one week (shown below, left) and a response from @saltandbrepper^[3] also that day about Oblivion that gained over 7,200 retweets and 66,000 likes in the same time (shown below, right).

The success of the video games-themed prompt soon inspired similar tweets about other genres in subsequent days. One Twitter user introduced a thread asking for animation facts. Though the original tweet has since been deleted, esoteric facts about animation soon flooded Twitter. For example, user @Serp022 posted a fact about Invader Zim on January 26th, gaining over 1,800 retweets and 15,000 likes in one day (shown below, top). On January 25th, user @StevenVargasArt posted a fact about a The Proud Family scene, gaining over 10,000 retweets and 74,000 likes in two days (shown below, bottom).

In invader Zim this walk was supposed to be menacing but when the animation team was done with this, the staff thought peepi was dancing so they added the music https://t.co/lNiccF0jfA pic.twitter.com/v941ozApqm

— Neffy (@Serp022) January 26, 2023

Iirc, the Oscar Proud run from The Proud Family Movie was originally meant to have him running in slow motion. When the animation came back from overseas, it looked like this. The crew found it funny and kept it that way. https://t.co/stl9QkkpzX pic.twitter.com/3PsdpUjoKG

— Steven V. (@StevenVargasArt) January 26, 2023

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References