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Red flags are everywhere.
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Twitter is full of warnings this week. A new trend on the platform has users tweeting the red flag emoji to highlight opinions and behaviors they find to be, well, red flags.
The platform says it’s seen a 455% increase over the last week in tweets using the emoji in the US. Tuesday saw 1.5 million red-flag-emoji tweets globally.
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From people cautioning about worrisome behavior kuliner indonesia from a prospective date, to brands trying to capitalize on the trend, here’s the rundown on the rows of red flags filling up your timeline.
What do the red flags mean?
Outside Twitter, the phrase red flag is used as a warning. as a “warning signal or sign,” or “something that indicates or draws attention to a problem, danger, or irregularity.” The dictionary pinpoints the first usage of red flag as a noun dating back to 1748.
Thanks to the red flag emoji, Twitter users can just punctuate a tweet with the symbol, or even use a whole row of them to show something is troublesome.
How did the trend start?
According to , the trend started among Black Twitter users this week who were talking about red flags in dating. The tweets covered things like someone who’s always online but is slow to text back; someone saying they’re still friends with their ex, or “going all day without talking to me.” A tweet calling out the latter is one of the top retweeted tweets of this trend, raking in more than 28,000 retweets so far.
going all day without talking to me
— I N A (@inaflorescaa)
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TEXT SLOW BUT ALWAYS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
— PEGEE (@VH1PNUT___)
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“me and my ex are still friends”
— ♀️ (@mykelrenee)
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Though not always, many of the tweets are formatted as quotes followed by the flags.
What are people warning each other about?
In short, everything. People are tweeting opinions on sports, food, movies, music, politics and more that they find to be problematic. Not all the tweets are serious; many of them are jokes.
One Twitter user tweeted: “My favorite movie is Fight Club.”
“My favourite movie is Fight Club.”
— Andres Ghoulsman (@pocketwriter)
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Another tweeted: “My team is the Dallas Cowboys.”
“My team is the Dallas Cowboys”
— jordan grimes ☯️ (@jordanxtsg)
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Celebrity chef Padma Lakshmi tweeted that a red flag for her would be someone saying, “I don’t like Indian food.”
“I don’t like Indian food”
— Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi)
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“Im not really on social media”
— Kozza (@Kozza)
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From sports teams to restaurants, brands are also going all in on the trend, like the PGA Tour flagging, “Golf is not a real sport.”
“Golf is not a real sport.”
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR)
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“I don’t keep up with pop music”
— MTV (@MTV)
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“I’m not a Crocs person”
— It’s Croctober! (@Crocs)
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“No thanks, I don’t want any Tubby Custard!”
— Teletubbies (@TeletubbiesHQ)
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