Sometimes I Just Want To Copy Someone Else's Status, Word For Word, And See If They Notice: How It All Started

Curious how this Twitter and Facebook meme started today? "Sometimes I Just Want To Copy Someone Else's Status, Word For Word, And See If They Notice."

With the help of newly-launched Google Realtime, we believe we've tracked down the originator of today's meme that has created a massive echo chamber on social networks.

It appears to have started with Twitter user Tim Waters (@tim_waters), a "freelance geo fella" per his Twitter bio of Leeds, U.K. , who tweeted the sentence at 10:42 a.m. EST.

Others copied him and it continued to circulate in the United Kingdom before jumping the pond within 10 minutes when @Billfgreer of Virginia and @elspethjane of New York City tweeted it to their followers.

It later caught the attention of TechCrunch and even Dolly Parton who tweeted it to her 722,000 followers. It then apparently journeyed to Facebook.

TechCrunch notes two people tweeted similar wording (but not exact) as early as Aug. 18.

Comments

[Tasslehoff]

02:13 AM on 09/12/2010

I reposted this status personally from a friend on Facebook at 2:13 PST on August 25.

[ahaticket]

09:32 PM on 08/29/2010

looks like its in french now, too: http://twitter.com/Kortaggio/status/22484257151

[Wanjiru]

09:26 PM on 08/26/2010

Hardly anyone ever reads my Twitter timeline, so this couldn't possibly happen to me.
.

[Emma Asomba]

10:28 PM on 08/26/2010

Don't say so, we're all stars in our own rights.

[tim waters2]

07:33 PM on 08/26/2010

Not me guvnr, it seems no one noticed that I copied it ;)

[EricLightborn]

07:13 PM on 08/26/2010

Google Realtime is 404ing all over us, in realtime...

[Spencer Morgan]

07:06 PM on 08/26/2010

Actually, at 10:02 PM on Tuesday the 24th Chanel Beck Posted this from her phone in Phoenix, AZ; then, I re-posted it to my account at 10:08 that same day. It then spread virally through my friends and family and apparently to twitter in the UK as reported.

Verifiable at facebook.com/Spencer.C.Morgan.

[Craig Kanalley]

07:24 PM on 08/26/2010

Hi Spencer, Perhaps that's true, but our article focuses on how the meme spread today, and your post refers to Tuesday.