For years people have been serving, sipping, and spilling tea online, as a way of spreading or savoring good gossip. Urban Dictionary defines it as “gossip or personal information belonging to someone else; the scoop; news spill the tea about what happened at the club.”
On the internet, the tea is typically accompanied with any one of a variety of memes—most notably, the Tea Lizard (Kermit the Frog) “but that’s none of my business” meme—but that’s just one of many. And now on Twitter, people have found a new way to enjoy their tea.
Earlier this month, an ASCII Art image rendering of a piping hot cup of tea began going viral, with a controversial opinion or hot take written in the middle and the caption “today’s tea.”
The meme can be used to drop truths about virtually any subject, such as politics, religion, relationships, or—in at least one example—shrimp being bugs, as you can see below.
) ) )
— adam (@burgerkrang) February 11, 2019
) ( ) )
_(___(____)____(___(__
/
shrimps / |
is /____|
bugs /
__________/
Today’s tea:
— Mark Takano (@RepMarkTakano) February 11, 2019
) ) )
) ( ) )
_(___(____)____(___(__ _
#GOPTaxScam /
Average tax / |
refunds /____|
are down /
8.4% /
___________/
https://twitter.com/spazful/status/1093950481863327744
https://twitter.com/YossoMyBosso/status/1094410174029193216
Today's tea:
— Jay Shelat (@jshelat1) February 7, 2019
(
( ) )
_(_____)____(_____(____(_
Grad students /_
should be / |
paid livable /___|
wages for /
their hard /
_ work _/
Today’s tea is:
— Shane Simpson (@shanesimpsonn) February 11, 2019
) ) )
) ( ) )
_(___(____)____(___(__ _
Stop comparing /
Nicki and Cardi / |
the shit is /____|
boring /
asf now /
___________ /
Today’s tea:
— Freddie (@FreddieBailey96) February 12, 2019
) ) )
) ( ) )
_(___(____)____(___(_____
Poverty exists not /
because we can't / |
feed the poor, /__ |
but because we /
can't satisfy /
_the rich___/
One person used the meme to make a joke about Dairy Queen’s famous Blizzards, which are touted to be so thick that you can literally hold them upside down:
https://twitter.com/LlamaInaTux/status/1094742129006559233
And as usual, #brands got in on the action, such as these examples from Target and Formula 1:
Today’s tea:
— Target (@Target) February 5, 2019
) ) )
) ( ) ) )
_(___(____)____(___(__ (___
You can’t act surprised / _
that you got more / |
than 1 item, when /____|
you do it all /
the time /
____________/
Today's tea:
— Formula 1 (@F1) February 13, 2019
) ) )
) ( ) )
_(___(____)____(___(__ _
THREE /
car launches / |
today. Who /___|
needs tea?! /
/
________ _/
This is actually just the latest evolution of the meme, however, which actually first went viral around May of 2018, using a different ASCII depiction of a mug. According to Know Your Meme, the earliest example was a tweet about how “Loki deserved better,” referring to (spoiler!) the crushing death of the antihero at the hands of Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War.
today's tea:
— jace | ia (@avengerdcnvers) May 23, 2018
╭╯╭╯╭╯╭╯
█████████ ═╮
█ loki █ ∥
█ deserved █ ∥
█ better █▏ ∥
████████ ═╯
◥██████◤
You can see some other early example of the meme below, comparing Brooklyn Nine-Nine to the Big Bang Theory and Josh and Tyler from the musical duo Twenty One Pilots:
today's tea:
— H (@dailybrooklyn99) May 29, 2018
╭╯ ╭╯╭╯╭╯
██████████ ═╮
█ b99 is 100 █ |
█ times better █ |
█ than the big
bang theory █ | ██████████ ═ ╯
◥████████◤
https://twitter.com/legendtrench/status/999692763431145473
But the best explanation of the evolution of the meme can probably be best summed up by Jonny Sun, in a tweet just earlier today:
todays tea:
— jonny sun (@jonnysun) February 13, 2019
) ) )
) ( ) )
_(___(____)____(___(___
served in a / _
different mug / |
but otherwise /___ |
the same as /
last year’s /
___________ /
Once again, the internet proves to be a snake, eating its own tail.