Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt on Tuesday called it quits after more than a decade as a couple. The #Brangelina divorce was the kind of seismic shift in the celebrity stars that seizes social media for several hours.
Indeed, the Twitter aftermath was about what you’d expect. We just didn’t think that all roads would lead back to Pitt’s ex-wife, Jennifer Aniston, the Friends star he left in the mid-2000s for Jolie. According to data provided to the Daily Dot by Spredfast, Aniston was a top Twitter term associated with the #Brangelina split. (Jokes about Taylor Swift swooping in to steal Pitt were likewise rampant.)
Since Tuesday, both “#Brangelina” and “Brad Pitt” have received just north of 500,000 mentions on Twitter, with less than 470,000 for Jolie. Fifty-seven percent of these tweets came from females.
But, as Spredfast tells the Dot, “when we look at all conversation around #Brangelina, Jennifer Aniston actually has the highest share of voice. … This is largely because of all of the memes people have being sharing of Jennifer Aniston.”
“Share of voice” refers to breaking down the #Brangelina conversation into what users are actually tweeting about. Here, 6.4 percent of posts mentioned Aniston—compared to only 5.3 for Jolie.
Spredfast
After years of collective American sympathy for Aniston—seen as a spurned woman unfairly left behind by Pitt and America’s tabloid culture—it was perhaps poetic justice for the internet to steal Jolie’s spotlight. Or maybe we all just want an excuse to share more Friends GIFs.