UPDATED 23:57 EST / DECEMBER 05 2017

APPS

No prizes for Donald Trump in Twitter’s annual review

President Donald Trump, perhaps in recent times Twitter Inc.’s most controversial user, might be disappointed to find out that this year his tweets were less popular than the former president of the U.S.

On Tuesday, Twitter released its yearly data and it was revealed that former President Barack Obama was the most retweeted man in politics. His post, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion,” was in fact the second most popular tweet in 2017 – so far, at least. The Aug. 13 tweet, posted by Obama after antifascist protester Heather Heyer died during the Charlottesville protest, received 1.7 million retweets and 4.6 million likes.


Obama had in total three tweets in the top 10 most popular tweets of the year.

A cynical observer might say the most popular tweet this year doesn’t reflect well on the human race, at least the part that’s on Twitter. That was from a young man looking to get free chicken nuggets at Wendy’s for one year. After asking Wendy’s how many retweets it would take, the fast food restaurant put the number at 18 million retweets. The boy did OK, his post retweeted 3.6 million times. In the end, Wendy’s gave him an A for effort for breaking Twitter’s retweeting record and he got his free nuggets.

Depending how you look at it, mankind rescued some dignity with the third most retweeted post. This was posted by Penn State IFC, who pledged 15 cents for every retweet of its post. The proceeds would go to help victims of flooding in Houston. Another top 10 tweet was a man donating dog food during the devastation in Houston.

An honorable mention was LeBron James haranguing his basketball nemesis Stephen Curry over Curry’s seemingly rebuffing Donald Trump’s invitation to the White House. Singer Ariana Grande also made the list with an apology following the deaths of 23 people at her concert in Manchester in May in what police said was a terrorist attack.

Image: Oliver Tacke via Flickr

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