Several hours after President Obama used the term “Romnesia,” a portmanteau of his GOP opponent’s surname and “amnesia,” during a campaign speech in Virginia, the term topped Twitter’s trending topics in the US, showing once again that Twitter users are eagerly combing the 2012 election cycle for catchy phrases to hashtag.
The term “Romnesia” went viral on Friday, becoming a surprise hit with more than 18,000 tweets per hour during its peak at 1pm.
“If you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, here is the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions,” Obama said.
Of course, not all tweets containing the term “Romnesia” were flattering to the POTUS. Houston Texans running back Arian Foster’s take on the term was highly re-tweeted:
Someone needs to oversee these tweets. RT @barackobama: RT if you agree: We don’t need a president with #Romnesia in the White House.
— Arian Foster (@ArianFoster) October 19, 2012
According to Politico, the term “Romnesia” isn’t even all that new, and was used at least as early as March on Twitter, and Facebook page “Being Liberal” used the term in October.
Being the social media POTUS, it’s possible that Obama got “Romnesia” from the internet instead of giving it to him, and his Twitter-happy followers are suffering some from the phenomenon themselves. Still, we hope it’s not the last hashtag funny to come out of this election before it wraps up in a few weeks.
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Loving the #Obamacare #Romnesia comments on social networking; a great bit of levity in the campaign and a clear energiser for the Democratic base, there will be some fallout for Romney over this. It may be a pithy bit of electoral work but the zingy comments coming from the Obama camp are getting the twittersphere (and other social networks: https://goo.gl/8FyZJ) all fired up.