You Are The General Hannibal

About

You Are The General Hannibal is a phrasal template tweet format first coined in early 2022 by Twitter user @doulbedoink. The format juxtaposes a mundane internet event or squabble with a copypasta that reads, "You bolt awake in the mountains of Carthage. You are not online. It is 217 BC. You are the general Hannibal, and you have changed your mind. The future cannot come to pass. Rome must burn."

Origin

On March 16th, 2022, Twitter^[1] user @doulbedoink posted the earliest example of the phrase in a tweet that read:

"Omg did you see what Vaush said to contra on twitch? Like he was streaming the whole ti-"
You bolt awake in the mountains of Carthage. You are not online. It is 217 BC. You are the general Hannibal, and you have changed your mind. The future cannot come to pass. Rome must burn.

The tweet proceeded to gather over 50,000 likes and 7,000 retweets in nearly a year (seen below).

Spread

In subsequent months, various Twitter users then began to use the tweet format to comment on similarly mundane internet issues and drama. On May 25th, 2022, Twitter^[2] user @haramcart posted a similar tweet, replacing the anecdote about Vaush with, "OMG did you see Jake Flores embarrassed himself again? Yeah man Nick Mullen made a thre–." The tweet gathered over 8,000 likes in nearly 10 months (seen below, left). On June 19th, Twitter^[3] user @JUNlPER posted a tweet with the start of the copypasta reading, "did you know this twitter user is a horrible person? no, i don’t have any proof, but-." The post gathered over 9,000 likes in nine months (seen below, right).

The tweet also spawned various parodies that changed the copypasta portion of the template. On March 31st, 2022, Twitter^[4] user @_Jason_Dean_ posted a tweet that read, "'Did you hear that Pete Davidson had sex wi-' You bolt awake on the train to Moscow. You are not online. It is March 1923. You are Leon Trotsky, and you have changed your mind. The future cannot come to pass. Stalin must be stopped." The tweet gathered over 1,000 likes in nearly a year (seen below).

On July 30th, 2022, Twitter^[5] user @SegaCD8 posted a tweet that read, "Elizabeth Bruenig: wow wait so you’re saying Vatican II was illegitimate? / Dasha: yeah exactly. Not a true / you bolt awake in your camp. you are not online. it is 312 AD and you are the emperor valerius maxentius. this future cannot come to pass. constantine must be destroyed." The tweet gathered over 1,000 likes in nearly eight months (seen below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References