How Carson Wentz became the butt of Sports Twitter's most annoying joke

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"In 4 seasons Carson Wentz has ZERO playoff wins, 48 regular season fumbles. He is 7-20 vs teams over 500. He has no heart no desire to win. His teammates hate him. He has started 5-6 in 3 of his first 4 seasons. Eagles are 24-6 in their last 30 games with Nick Foles"

- Twitter Proverb

***

If you've used Twitter to talk about sports since early March, you've probably run into The Tweet.

It laments Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz's career statistics, attacks his character and suggests former Eagles quarterback Nick Foles would be a suitable replacement.

These ideas aren't unique to one account. Segments of Eagles Twitter, NFL Twitter, and Sports Twitter all participate in the Wentz-Foles debate, some every day. It's a raging fire.

But The Tweet is different. It's the same 54-word, 268-character screed every single time:

Since March, it's appeared in the replies of every major sports account on Twitter, from Bleacher Report to ESPN, and has been sent to almost every individual sports personality.

It's a copypasta, an internet phrase that borrows heavily from "copy and paste" and dates back to the mid-2000s. A famous example from the mid-2010s: People began copy-and-pasting the entire script of "The Bee Movie" onto Tumblr, Facebook, and Reddit posts as one big, weird inside joke.

The Tweet is now Sports Twitter's most invasive copypasta, an inescapable non-response used to troll anyone who (unwisely) wants to actually have the Wentz-Foles debate.

From what I can tell, it began with one account.

@funnydan521 was an anti-Wentz "bot" account, seemingly dedicated to disparaging Wentz for hours on end. The account's anti-Wentz streak dated back at least to late 2019, retweeting anti-Wentz sentiments and replying to both local and national reporters ad nauseam. 

To some, @funnydan521 is known simply as "yellow flower guy" because his Twitter profile photo was of yellow flowers, and since his account was suspended in mid-March, the photo is all that's left of his Twitter presence:

Because of the suspension, it's hard to find the first time @funnydany521 first used The Tweet. We might never pinpoint the exact origin of The Tweet. But we can keep pulling the thread and trying to piece together its journey together.

Because, when @funnydan521 was suspended in mid-March for violating Twitter's rules against spam using the reply function, the person behind the account created a new account: @alex77033705.

And @alex77033705 was ruthless.

People quickly made the connection between @funnydan521 and @alex77033705, especially when @alex77033705 started posting the same tweet in the replies of any major sports account:

https://twitter.com/PlayoffMills/status/1255232928730222592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

You name the outlet: @alex77033705 was there, carrying on @funnydan521's legacy.

@alex77033705 would also reply with a link to one YouTube video, entitled "Carson Wentz is the dumbest player in sports," a 187-second, faceless rant about Wentz:

@alex77033705 would also seek out and actively "like" other accounts who shared The Tweet:

If you go and look at all replies to @alex77033705, you'll find a stream of people asking why they do what they do. You can scroll for what feels like an eternity, wading through Wentz-Foles arguments, expletives and the detritus of a broken internet.

@alex77033705 earned quite a reputation online, to the point where users would tweet about them unprompted:

https://twitter.com/H_Brock7/status/1258534672109154305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

@alex77033705 became known.

Finally, after two months, @alex77033705 was suspended this week for spam using the reply function. It's unclear when exactly the account was suspended, but the account's last action was retweeting a tweet from May 17.

Some mourned the loss of @alex77033705:

https://twitter.com/DavidLee_Goth/status/1263228142422036481?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

But the account's legacy is far from over.

According to the Advanced Twitter Search feature, The Tweet turned from a one-person wrecking crew into a copypasta in early May, when a few accounts went semi-viral by sending The Tweet:

https://twitter.com/kendalIfulIer/status/1258029494281084928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Pretty quickly, Twitter users noticed The Tweet was appearing everywhere:

https://twitter.com/ArmyOfRasmii/status/1258054004120211457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Since the early May explosion, it's so popular that accounts like Barstool UND (10K+ followers) are getting in on it:

It's so popular that it spread to Facebook, where anti-Eagles fanpage EaglesBasher (9K+ likes) got in on it 

It's so popular that it reached local sports blog Crossing Broad's comment section, in a story about the Eagles' schedule release:

It's everywhere now.

In an attempt to reclaim the joke, Eagles fans are starting to turn The Tweet on its head. Users like @TrillBroDude have changed their display name into a portion of The Tweet:

Ultimately, with The Tweet's current level of ubiquity, it's probably smart for Wentz fans to lean into the joke. Because of the effort @alex77033705 and @funnydan521 put into laying the ground work, odds are good The Tweet is here to stay.

At least until Wentz wins his first playoff game.

Then we can all update The Tweet, and begin a new chapter.

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