Though it spawned some amusing responses, the tweet was not appreciably stranger than most of the president’s tweets, which frequently feature misspellings, unconventional capitalization and unusual use of quotation marks. In fact, the “covfefe” gaffe was just the latest of Mr. Trump’s tweets to bear an uncanny resemblance to certain strains of absurdist Twitter comedy.
Sometime in the early 2010s, a style of humor marked by bizarre spelling, grammar and subject matter became popular on Twitter. Ultimately known as “weird Twitter,” it was tough to define — talking about weird Twitter was a surefire way to get made fun of by weird Twitter — but easy to spot. Practitioners included @dril, who remains anonymous, and Patricia Lockwood, a poet and the author of the recent memoir “Priestdaddy.” Along with @horse_ebooks, an account that tweeted seemingly random but frequently entertaining snippets of text, the weird Twitter comedians presided over the emergence of a new and ridiculous form of humor.
While the heyday of weird Twitter is probably over (the form may have reached peak awareness in 2013, with an oral history by John Herrman and Katie Notopoulous at BuzzFeed), its spirit lives on in high-concept humor accounts like @SICKOFWOLVES, the online performance art of Chuck Tingle — and, most oddly, in the early-morning missives of President Trump.
Mr. Trump isn’t the first politician to exhibit weird Twitter characteristics — weird Twitter denizens sometimes counted Senator Chuck Grassley as one of their own for tweets like this:
Fred and I hit a deer on hiway 136 south of Dyersville. After I pulled fender rubbing on tire we continued to farm. Assume deer dead
— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley)
October 26, 2012
But when it comes to strange sentences and a tenuous connection to reality, Mr. Trump has the rest of Washington beat. You don’t even need to go to covfefe to see the weird-Twitter resemblance. Let’s look at some of the president’s ordinary, everyday tweets, paired with tweets from @horse_ebooks:
Russian officials must be laughing at the U.S. & how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
May 30, 2017
Not only that, but whether you believe it (or want to believe it) the car salesmen will continue to laugh
— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks)
September 16, 2013
Getting ready for my big foreign trip. Will be strongly protecting American interests - that's what I like to do!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
May 19, 2017
Bringing hundreds of billions of dollars back to the U.S.A. from the Middle East - which will mean JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
May 27, 2017
.RAVEL. .RAVEL. .RAVEL. .RAVEL. .RAVEL. .RAVEL. .RAVEL. .RAVEL. GRADING AND GRAVEL. .RADING AND GRAVEL. GRAVEL. GRADING AND GRAVEL. TOTAL
— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks)
September 17, 2013
Like Mr. Trump, Chuck Tingle likes capitalizing words in the middle of sentences. Observe:
We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
May 30, 2017
i have just learned that french buckaroo EMMANUALS MACARON have been elected TOP BUCKAROO OF FRANCE congrats to him this proves love is real
— Chuck Tingle (@ChuckTingle)
May 7, 2017
Mr. Tingle also sometimes tweets when he doesn’t mean to.
if you are seeing my late night searches please do not share i am having privacy setting issues please ignore until this is sorted thank you
— Chuck Tingle (@ChuckTingle)
May 5, 2017
Interestingly, he hates President Trump.
David Covucci at The Daily Dot noticed the resemblance between @realDonaldTrump and @dril back in March, and offered a number of helpful comparisons, including this one:
SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
February 9, 2017
"im not owned! im not owned!!", i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob
— wint (@dril)
November 11, 2011
Mr. Covucci floated one possible explanation for the similarity: “Dril’s real identity has never been made public. What if Donald Trump is @dril? Would it be any stranger than Donald Trump being president of the United States?”
While installing one of its own as president would certainly be weird Twitter’s greatest troll, another explanation seems more likely: Donald Trump’s Twitter presence isn’t absurdist, it’s just absurd. Unmoored from proper grammar and spelling as well as from reality itself, his tweets are sometimes funny — who can resist a good “covfefe” joke? — and always scary.
It would be unfair to blame Mr. Trump for the decline of weird Twitter — that particular school of comedy was fragmenting and changing before his campaign got going. But it’s certainly true that weird Twitter was funny in part because other segments of Twitter were normal, and now that Mr. Trump has warped not just Twitter but American life with his deeply weird presence, mere absurdity no longer registers as parody. In fact, perhaps the best Trump parody is @MatureTrump, which imagines a world in which Mr. Trump “acted like the President that the country needs, as well as the one it deserves.” @MatureTrump uses standard sentence structure to make typical presidential announcements and express reasonable sentiments about the direction of the country.
In the coming days I will post my complete plan for healthcare reform on my website, so all Americans may understand their coverage options. https://t.co/ue21JwCVeP
— Mature Donald Trump (@MatureTrump)
February 19, 2017
Unfortunately, @MatureTrump last tweeted on February 19. We’re on our own now.
© 2017 The New York Times News Service 
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