You
On 29th July 2018 at precisely 1:07pm, something happened. Former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani tweeted:
You
— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) July 29, 2018
Perhaps it was a mistake, like a butt dial except on Twitter. Maybe it was a secret code. Could it be a sinister ploy to go viral, in which case we’ve all moulded like putty in his hands and fallen right into the trap.
We must get to the bottom of this. Time will continue to stand still until we do. We need to get in on the ground floor before Netflix does a 10-part documentary series and then separate to that series introduces some bullshit owl theory that simply doesn’t add up.
The world needs to know: Why did Rudy Giuliani tweet ‘You’?
The Autofill Theory
It’s an absolute certainty that the autofill feature will ultimately kill us all. Robots are coming for every single one of our pathetic jobs and Rudy Giuliani is no exception to this inevitability. When was the last time you sat at a browser and physically typed in the entire URL, ‘http://’ included? I will hazard a guess at never, or perhaps in 1998. The correct way to use an internet browser is to open it, type the first three letters of your intended website destination and then let the machine do its goddamn job from there.
So it’s possible that Rudy Giuliani was confused at the time. It was just after lunch, perhaps his hands were still marred with the residue of a thick pastrami sandwich from Katz’s deli. He may have removed his glasses to avoid the steam from the pastrami fogging up his vision. Rudy was operating with impaired vision and dirty hands. He fancied a quick post-lunch hit of content, so shuffled his way over to the desktop and typed ‘You’, then hit return. Unfortunately, the command sent a tweet rather than completing his intended autofill initiation.
But which website was Rudy looking for? Was it YouTube, the popular video-sharing platform? Or in a more sinister act, was it YouPorn, a pornographic video-sharing website? Well, which would be likely to interest the politician more? On the subject of pornography, Giuliani once stated that Stormy Daniels had no credibility because she was a porn star. This was funny for two reasons: 1) It is the dumbest statement in the history of humanity and 2) His client, Donald Trump, has appeared in three Playboy videos that also contain pornographic content, ergo he said that POTUS has no credibility.
So why was Rudy Giuliani looking at either YouTube or YouPorn after lunch on a Sunday? We can never really work out why, not until such time as he tells us. But the most logical speculation is that he was feeling tremendously frisky after a pastrami sandwich and needed to reinforce his batshit belief that porn stars and Presidents have no credibility.
The Alphabet Code Theory
A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, D = 4, etc.
With the alphabet numeracy chart, each letter corresponds to a number. When you take ‘You’ and run it through the code, the numbers you’re left with are 25, 15 and 21. Now, let’s talk about Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign in 2008, keeping those numbers in mind.
Giuliani announced in February 2007 that he was actively seeking the presidential nomination of the Republican Party. After failing to actively campaign in the early voting states by focusing on the larger states, Giuliani ultimately fell short after finishing third in the Florida primary. He felt this was largely due to the late endorsements for McCain of Florida Senator and former Chairman of the Republican National Committee Mel Martinez, which happened on January 25th. He eventually withdrew from the race and endorsed Republican nominee John McCain.
If we go back to May of the same year, Giuliani and nine other Republican presidential contenders took part in the first MSNBC 2008 Republican Presidential Candidates Debate. In the online vote that was released after the debate, Giuliani finished in third place with 15% of the votes. It’s important to remember that John McCain ultimately went on to win the nomination.
So that leaves us with number 21. The final piece of the puzzle in this particular theory. But what does 21 represent?
Pictured above is the USS John S. McCain (DDG-56), an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer currently in the service of the United States Navy. She’s part of the Destroyer Squadron 15 with the Seventh Fleet, for those that weren’t aware. More importantly, the destroyer was involved in a collision with the merchant ship Alnic MC on 21st August last year.
UUS John S. McCain was named after John S. McCain Snr and John S. McCain Jr, both of whom were admirals in the United States Navy. Just last month, Senator John S. McCain III was added as a namesake, along with his father and grandfather.
How does this all tie together? Giuliani is clearly still fixated on McCain winning the Republican Presidential nomination in 2008. He’s bitter. He wants revenge. The presidency was his job to lose. This subliminal combination of letters and numbers used in that fateful ‘You’ tweet were very clearly intended to be seen by set of eyes only. He’s coming for McCain and this is the warning sign. Senator McCain, if you are reading this, you need to start using the chain lock on your front door again.
The Ed Balls Theory
Having previously written at length about how Ed Balls came to tweet ‘Ed Balls’ on an April afternoon in 2011, it’s entirely plausible that we’re seeing a copycat effect coming from Rudy Giuliani on this particular occasion.
Ed Balls
— Ed Balls (@edballs) April 28, 2011
Seven years ago, Ed Balls tweeted ‘Ed Balls’ and has received over 100,000 retweets for his efforts. He went viral, achieved mass acclaim online and created a national holiday whereby 28th April is forevermore known as Ed Balls Day.
Rudy Giuliani has tweeted, at present, 63 times. His tweets mostly centre around American politics, which leaves very little room for banter. But if you look at the ratio of interactions on what will historically be known as ‘The You Tweet’, it’s an interesting result.
The retweets are nowhere near #EdBalls’ levels of interaction, but look at the replies. 24,000 smart-arses chiming in to get a slice of that sweet sweet viral pie. That’s some next level social media consultancy taking place. We’re living in an age where a tweet that says ‘Have a wonderful day’ will get, at best, one like and one reply. But if you tweet your own name, or simply a random word without context, you’re going to go viral.
Giuliani’s popularity rating isn’t particularly stellar at the moment, so he’s thirsting after the millennials’ attention. Participating in a meme is fun, but creating one is when you gain hero status on Twitter. Rudy Giuliani tweeted ‘You’ at 1:07pm on a Sunday afternoon because he wanted to go viral. There’s a twitter moment dedicated to the funniest replies right now. I have written 1,200 words about the dumb tweet. CNN crafted an article about it. Jimmy Fallon made a sketch. This is all it takes to go viral in 2018. Just tweet something dumb. Even Ed Balls will join in on the action.
In conclusion, Rudy Giuliani was probably looking for porn. Also, the world is a Godless place and we are all morons. Have a wonderful day 🙂
