Never underestimate the power of minorities, especially on Twitter.
Over the last 24 hours, the Spanish phrase “me enojo cuando,” which translates to “I get mad when,” has been a top trending topic in the U.S., collecting more that 22,000 mentions, according to Topsy, a social media search engine.
While most U.S. trending topics are English words or phrases, it should be no surprise that a Spanish topic would squeeze through the cracks, considering the millions of Hispanics who use Twitter.
Of the roughly 74 million U.S. active Twitter users, 8.1 million of them are Spanish speaking, according to Social Media Spanish, a consulting firm. That’s roughly 11 percent.
Pew Research indicates that of all Twitter users combined, roughly 19 percent identify as Latino, and that ethnic group is almost twice as likely to use Twitter than whites. That’s not altogether surprising given that Hispanics are the largest minority in the country, with 50 million people, according to the U.S. Census.
There’s no official figure on how many times a week a Spanish phrase becomes a U.S. trending topic. But judging from our active monitoring here at the Daily Dot, Spanish trending topics pop up about two to three times a week and usually focus on big events, such as the MTV Video Music Brazil Awards and Anonymous hacker activity in Mexico.
But as #meenojocuando proves, Hispanics also enjoy light-hearted topics on Twitter as well.