It’s almost every user’s dream on Twitter, rebranded to X, to go viral for their posts. Imagine getting notifications for hundreds of thousands of likes, thousands of reposts, and hundreds of replies. While this is a wonderful experience, it can also become a nightmare if you trend for all the wrong reasons. Several posts on X can feature in the list of worst tweets of all time.
What tweets continue to live in the minds of the internet audience rent-free? What should you do if you also find yourself in a similar situation? The answers to all these questions and more lie in this article.
Table of Contents
4 Worst Tweets of All Time: Infamous Moments in Twitter Trends
There is no way to know what everyone will be talking about in X’s town square. Sometimes, an old offensive post from a celebrity suddenly trends out of the blue. In other situations, it can be a new tweet from a user who may not even be a public figure. Below, you’ll find four examples of the worst posts of all time.
1. Annalynne McCord’s Video About Vladimir Putin
Annalynne McCord, an American actress, posted a video on the day the conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out. It was a poem about how she could prevent the war if she were Vladimir Putin’s mother.
However, things didn’t go as planned, as people on X reacted negatively to her post. The actress received significant backlash for the out-of-touch tweet. Several users mocked her and made countless memes of her post.
Despite the tweet backfiring on her, the actress didn’t delete the post.
2. Thanks for Sharing, Jerk’s Post About the Pandemic Just Before COVID-19
A user on X asked his followers, “What should come back from the 1920s to 2020?” @Thx4SharingJerk replied to the tweet with a single word, “Pandemics.” This happened a few months before the world came to a halt due to COVID-19.
The answer was in line with @Thx4SharingJerk’s writing style. Unfortunately, the user’s sarcastic take became a reality the following year.
3. Mekita Rivas’s Maths Tweet About Bloomberg Spending Hundreds of Millions on Ads
Mekita Rivas, a journalist, published a post about Michael Bloomberg, a former U.S. 2020 presidential candidate. The tweet was about how much he spent on advertising and how to spend the funds better to help people. Although the post was in good nature, the journalist made a significant mistake.
She didn’t do her calculations correctly, which was evident in her tweet. The journalist quickly discovered her mistake and deleted the post. However, this didn’t stop the internet from taking a screenshot of her tweet and spreading it like wildfire.
When the post’s virality was in the dying embers stage, MSNBC revived interest by talking about the tweet. As a result of these real-life events, the journalist’s post started trending again.
4. Justine Sacco Talking About AIDs and Ethnicity on X
Justine Sacco, a PR executive, posted a joke about AIDs and ethnicity while traveling to Cape Town. She didn’t think too much about the tweet when she published it. After all, there were only 170 people following her on the social media platform. Also, when she posted the tweet, it didn’t get any engagement from followers.
However, the post went viral, as users mistook the joke as a factual statement from the PR executive. As a result, there was significant outrage among the digital population. She endured countless personal insults due to the tweet’s content.
Her post was about privilege and how people living in first-world countries imagine themselves to be immune to various situations.
Unfortunately, no one took the time to analyze the post. Despite deleting her worst tweet of all time, she lost her job at InterActiveCorp (IAC).
Delete Tweets: Guide To Remove Your Worst Tweets From X
You suddenly remember a post from your account that can become your worst tweet ever. Or, there are several awful tweets in your profile that you need to remove immediately. Is there a discreet way to go about this so people don’t know about this activity?
Yes, there are two ways to delete tweets from your profile, as highlighted in the guides below.
1. Use X’s Delete Feature To Remove One Post at a Time
The simplest way to delete your worst tweet is from X itself. The social media giant allows users to remove their posts from the platform. The delete feature is available if you use X from a desktop browser or the mobile app. The instructions below show you how to save yourself from the internet’s ire:
Desktop Browser:
- Open X and enter the following search operator in the platform’s search field — (from:username) Twitter keyword. Replace “username” with your X handle and “Twitter keyword” with phrases from the post.
- X takes you to the search results page, where you will find the tweet.
- Left-click the three-dot button on the tweet’s card.
- A dropdown menu appears from the three-dot or overflow button. Select Delete from this menu to remove the post from your profile.
- A warning message will appear, explaining what this action will do. Left-click the Delete button.
Mobile App:
- Go to your profile page from X’s mobile app. You can do this by tapping Profile in the quick navigation panel.
- There’s a search button on top of your account page. You’ll see the magnifying glass icon on your banner image. Tap it, and X will only search for posts from your profile.
- Enter relevant Twitter keywords, i.e., phrases from tweets you want to remove.
- Tap the vertical three-dot button on the right side of the post and select Delete Post.
- Tap the Delete button again in the warning popup message.
Congratulations, you saved yourself from second-hand embarrassment by deleting the insensitive or offensive post.
If there are multiple tweets you need to remove, you have to repeat steps 1 – 5 several times.
2. Delete Thousands of Posts From Your Profile With TweetDelete
If you find X’s delete feature lacking, you must give TweetDelete a shot. It is a powerful tool to bulk-delete tweets from your profile page on X. If you want to remove multiple tweets, here’s how to do it via TweetDelete:
- Open TweetDelete on a desktop browser and left-click Sign In With Twitter. This button is visible on the top right corner of your screen. TweetDelete will ask you to connect your X account with their tool. This is essential as it needs access to your profile to delete tweets.
- Go to the Tweets tab from the top navigation bar.
- On this page, you’ll see all the filters that decide what posts to delete. Change them as per your preferences to target specific tweets.
- If you’re a first-time user of TweetDelete, it will show you the tool’s terms and conditions. You need to agree to these terms to proceed.
- Left-click Delete My Tweets to start
Can You See Deleted Tweets: Does X Store Your Posts After Removing Them?
Let’s say you publish a post that starts to trend as people find the tweet insensitive. However, you didn’t imagine this would be the case. You follow the instructions in the previous section and remove the post. Can people still see deleted tweets if they are no longer visible on X?
X doesn’t save your posts after you remove them from your profile. Even if people have a link to your tweet, they will only see that the page no longer exists. Also, the platform informs them about the deletion of the post.
What about your X Archive, a file about all your activities on this social media platform? While it contains significant data about your account, it doesn’t save your deleted tweets for more than 14 days.
But this doesn’t mean a copy of your post doesn’t exist on the internet. How is this possible?
People Can Screenshot the Post and Share It
The easiest way to preserve a post is to take a screenshot. Anyone can do this from their device. They can also mention @pikaso_me in the comments to take a screengrab of the post. This way, people can easily share images of the worst deleted tweets.
Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine Can Preserve Tweets
Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is an online repository of various websites. It is a handy utility to see how websites looked back in the day. You can also use this tool for other reasons, like checking out older posts of various Twitter users.
This method works for public figures like politicians, athletes, and celebrities. You can still go through all their posts even if they deactivate or delete their accounts.
However, the Wayback Machine may not have a snapshot of a user’s profile page if they aren’t famous.
ProPublica’s Politwoops Can Save Deleted Tweets
ProPublica is a non-profit organization that specializes in investigative journalism. They have an online tool — Politwoops, which records deleted posts from public officials and candidates, in office or otherwise. With this tool, you may be able to look for posts that political figures remove from their profiles.
Save Yourself From Outrage on Social Media Platforms Like X With TweetDelete
You can remove specific older posts from your profile without notifying other users. Remember, you must move fast to delete insensitive, controversial, or offensive tweets from your profile. Otherwise, people can save your posts, due to which they will live on forever.
To ensure you never find yourself in such situations, you need TweetDelete by your side. You already know how the bulk-delete tweets feature can save the day. Did you also know this tool can auto-delete posts from your profile? It removes posts containing specific keywords or hashtags. There’s a date range filter to delete older tweets periodically.
That’s not all. TweetDelete can also save you from second-hand embarrassment. When you like posts from other users, anyone can see them in your account’s Likes tab. Everyone will know if you hit the like button on tweets with sensitive content. Fortunately, this tool can automatically undo this and remove your likes from posts.
This way, even if your posts suddenly go viral, there isn’t anything controversial in your profile to affect your reputation. You don’t have to worry about losing your job because of what you tweeted a decade ago.
Join TweetDelete today to ensure your tweets don’t end up in a list of the worst tweets of all time!
