Netflix‘s U.S. Twitter account is supposed to be promoting the streaming service’s original TV shows—currently, the ’80s-inspired horror series Stranger Things. Instead, it had a minor freakout Thursday afternoon, tweeting “asdfghjkuytrewsdfghjnbdeu8765r.” Come again?
asdfghjkuytrewsdfghjnbdeu8765r
— Netflix (@netflix) August 4, 2016
The cryptic message was instantly popular. Dozens of people speculated about what it might mean. Did the community manager have a seizure and land on the keyboard?
Seemed more like a seizure. One of us has pills he takes, he'll let you borrow some.
— X-Man (@TNACreative) August 4, 2016
Is this the work of an unruly child?
@mgsiegler if that person is living anything like my life, this is a result of a small child in the office.
— David Bisset (@dimensionmedia) August 4, 2016
Or an unruly butt?
@netflix pic.twitter.com/47JKcfcm8F
— Kevin (@kftaba) August 4, 2016
Maybe it’s a code from Stranger Things?
https://twitter.com/Jaqsparow/status/761281987671789568
Or maybe @netflix was hacked?!
https://twitter.com/chadexcuse/status/761285041183920128
Netflix came back quickly with a GIF of young Stranger Things actor Gaten Matarazzo that doesn’t explain much:
@netflix pic.twitter.com/5Gzf1cmRnX
— Netflix (@netflix) August 4, 2016
But they also didn’t delete the tweet, because everyone loves it, and, as they say in the #content mines, engagement is through the roof.
What was asdfghjkuytrewsdfghjnbdeu8765r really, though?
Probably a password. The position of the characters on the keyboard gives it away. It’s a long string that’s easy as hell to type in, but looks random at first glance. Password security level: not great.
And we’re definitely not the only ones to notice this.
https://twitter.com/iwalkwithedead/status/761280131902177280
So you can bet that although Netflix is playing it cool by leaving the tweet up, at least one employee was frantically changing passwords this afternoon. Asdfghjkuytrewsdfghjnbdeu8765r!