The 10-Year-Old Tweet That Still Defines the Internet

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Though everybody complains about Twitter, no one can deny that it has brought some amazing phrases into our lives--things we can't imagine having read in any other place, or at any other time in history. Near the top of any list of the most treasured sentence fragments posted there, the now-defunct account @Horse_ebooks would have several entries. Twitter users still recirculate strange classics like "(using fingers to indicate triangular shape) SMELL SMELL SMELL GOOD NEW NEW NEW slice drink MATCH SPARKLER (thrown in air) STARS STARS STARS." But the best-known @Horse_ebooks tweet, posted 10 years ago today, was astounding in its clarity and salience.