Twitter is celebrating a very important, very niche 10-year anniversary
Happy Ed Balls Day, everyone.
It's sort of hard to believe, but what started as a wonderful Twitter mistake – and has since evolved into a fully-fledged annual internet celebration – first began a full 10 years ago. An actual decade. And needless to say, the anniversary has not gone unnoticed on Twitter.
But first, a quick recap. If you're not from the UK, you may be wondering a) who Ed Balls is, and b) why the sweet heck there's a day devoted to him on Twitter.
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We broke the whole thing down in detail a few years back, but the in-a-nutshell version is this: On April 28, 2011, Ed Balls – a prominent politician at the time, who had just started in his role as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer – managed to accidentally tweet his own name. Apparently it happened when he was shopping in ASDA, presumably as a result of him mistaking the Tweet box for the search bar.
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Twitter couldn't get enough of it. At the time the tweet led to multiple retweets, jokes, and memes, and two years later it was an official event. Soon people were celebrating with poems, cross stitches, photoshops, and framed images, and the whole thing had completely exploded.
Every year since, on April 28, the internet comes together to celebrate Ed Balls Day as one — and 2021 looks set to be no exception.
By the time most of us in the UK were waking up this morning, #EdBallsDay was already trending — and the tweets were already rolling in.
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It's still early, but we can likely expect much, much more where those came from as the day progresses. We'll keep this article updated as more tweets roll in.
And as for the man himself?
Well, after some initial early confusion Ed Balls has since learned to embrace the day whole-heartedly, previously posing with signs and even – during the memorable celebration of 2016 – baking a cake.
All eyes are now on the official @EdBalls account to see how he'll celebrate this year...
UPDATE: April 29, 2021, 10:04 a.m. AEST No word on whether he baked this himself, but it looks like the man himself had a very pleasant Ed Balls day.
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