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On April 26th, O'Neil published another article in Esquire about The Ratio, investigating a tweet by CNN pundit Chris Cillizza in which he linked to an article he wrote in defense of Ivanka Trump which as of May 2nd, 2017, has over 1,400 replies and only 23 retweets (shown below). Popular examples include a tweet by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart, who tweeted "Nothing is worse than a Yankee telling a Southerner that his monuments don't matter." Twitter user pointed out that the tweet's Ratio, which at the time stood at 1.4 thousand replies to 38 retweets, was "off the charts" (shown below). Following O'Neil's article, Weird Twitter and leftist Twitter began to take notice of ratios on particularly bad or controversial tweets. The Independent wrote about O'Neil's Ratio Law two days after the article was published in Esquire. He illustrated how United Airlines' tweeted response about the incident gained over 61,000 replies and merely 6,700 likes, and that the 10:1 ratio was evidence of the tweet's poor reception. O'Neil referenced several tweets related the the United Airlines Passenger Removal as examples of The Ratio at work. On April 11th, Luke O'Neil of Esquire published an article in which he outlined the theory of The Ratio, bringing the theory its widest audience yet. Online, it is typically used as a reaction image to preface one's rebuttal to a statement put forth by another. On March 15th, user tweeted "If the Replies:RT ratio is greater than 2:1, you done messed up" (shown below, right). 'That’s Where You’re Wrong, Kiddo,' also known as 'You’re Wrong Kiddo,' refers to an image of a crudely drawn character in sunglasses making a finger gun gesture with both hands while saying the aforementioned quote. That is the ratio of someone who fuuuuucked up" (shown below, left). He captioned it, "Nothing on this site makes me happier than reply-to-RT ratios like this. On March 7th, Twitter user tweeted a screenshot of a tweet by House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz which had 701 replies yet only 23 retweets and 108 likes.
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The Ratio began being noticed on Twitter in early 2017.
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