Man does God's work by preserving every meme format ever - in case Musk kills Twitter

For two weeks, Elon Musk, the-now Twitter owner, has made stark changes to the social media platform.

From the layoffs of employees and contractors to the Twitter Blue subscription plan that ended up resulting in fake profiles getting blue checks, the tech billionaire's Twitter has been through a lot.

And if Twitter happens to disappear completely off the face of the internet, other things, such as the entertaining memes that come up on the platform's feed, will also go.

But fret not.

A man named Nathan Allebach is doing the work of God, preserving almost every kind of meme to hit Twitter since 2019, all into a Google Doc.

Sign upto our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Allebach, who is a 31-year-old creative director and walkable communities aficionado, took to his Twitter on Sunday (13 November) to share his 105-page long document of all things memes, jokes, and emojis.

"If the ship goes down you can hold onto these overused jokes as a treat," he wrote, in part, accompanied by the link to the Google Doc.

Once people stumbled across Allebach's document on Twitter, they couldn't help but feel that it is a piece of cultural history from a "historian."

"A historian," one wrote, and Allebach responded: "Those who don't know their meme history are doomed to rememe it."

Another added: "This is amazing; it's like taking a trip down memory lane."

A third wrote: "Okay, we're all cracking jokes at the death of this platform to hide the fact that we're all walking through the stages of grief right now and desperately finding ways to connect beyond here.

"But jokes aside, this is magnificent; what a labor of love! I'm astounded and grateful."

Speaking to BuzzFeed News, Allebach told the outlet he created and shared the Google Doc because he realised the online world can "drain people."

Allebach also shared that he created the Doc in 2019 to track trends here and there, but once he saw that it got big, he shared it in a "private Facebook group" with other "social media managers."

Joining Twitter in 2009 and using it as a news source in 2014, Allebach developed a love-hate relationship with it because of random harassment from people but the positives of career elevation, "real-life relationships," and "some sense of meaning."

As for what will happen to Twitter, Allebach thinks the world will be "stuck" with it unless there is a good alternative.

"We all know it struggles to monetize because users are hostile to advertisers and don't want to subscribe after having it for free, but it's so internationally powerful with such a valuable audience, I can't imagine it tanking, despite [Musk's] best efforts," he told BuzzFeed, in part.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.