"Your an idiot" – apparently the 'most internet sentence.'

Its a lovely analysis, and ¹ I thought I'd have a look at just how 'internet' the phrase turned out to be.

The most retweeted "your an idiot" tweet is a reasonably standard 'step four' response from Frankie Boyle;

“@mckaycarl: @frankieboyle your an idiot and will be proved an idiot” *You're

— Frankie Boyle (@frankieboyle) July 20, 2013

614 retweets at the time of writing

I particularly liked the most retweeted 'step three' (ie. non-referential) tweet;

Your an idiot if you seriously think we'll go down. Look at our players/ manager. Stronger than some teams in the top four. It'll come.

— That QPR Guy (@Fulhamareshit) April 2, 2013

To quote from Wikipedia;

At the bottom of the table, Queens Park Rangers were relegated after a thoroughly dismal campaign in which they recorded the worst start in Premier League history, with not even Harry Redknapp's appointment as manager and a substantial investment in players during the January transfer window significantly improving their fortunes.

The most authoritative news story (according to Sysomos' measure of 'authority') – a story about another 'step four' usage - ABC News - Samuel L. Jackson schools the president;

“I’ll be reading scripts and the screenwriter mistakes ‘your’ for ‘you’re.’ On Twitter someone will write, ‘Your an idiot,’ and I’ll go, ‘No, you’re an idiot,’ and all my Twitterphiles will go, ‘Hey, Sam Jackson, he’s the grammar police,” Jackson said. “Somebody needs to be,” he added. “I mean, we have newscasters who don’t even know how to conjugate verbs, something Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow never had problems with. How the f> *> did we become a society where mediocrity is acceptable?”

The 'most authoritative' tweet;

“@StooMetz: @RobLowe your an idiot. Game of Thrones is the BEST drama on TV.” It's "you're". You're welcome. From "the idiot".

— Rob Lowe (@RobLowe) April 8, 2013

Again, 'step four' is a popular one – especially when from a celebrity. (Rob Lowe has 815,084 followers.)

A wordcloud of "your an idiot" Twitter mentions isnt particularly enlightening (although the word 'irony' is a nice indication of 'stage 4' popularity…)

But looking at volumes over time, perhaps its actually a bit of a 2013 thing – volumes seem to have been steadily decreasing. (The rise of mobile and autocorrect, perhaps?) The 600 tweets a day estimate in the original article seems to be a little high – although its definitely down from about 850 a year ago.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, its less of a big deal in the blogosphere;

…and, although nowhere near as big as Twitter, still fairly popular on forums.