What is BP Oil Spill?

The BP Oil Spill refers to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, but online it also points to the wave of parody tweets, image macros, and slang that mocked BP's response to the leak.

Where did BP Oil Spill come from?

The physical event started on April 20, 2010 with the Deepwater Horizon explosion, and the meme side took off in early May when the @BPGlobalPR parody account launched on Twitter.

What does BP Oil Spill mean?

Online it means both the historical spill and a running joke about corporate PR spin, and Urban Dictionary lists it as slang for any giant mess.

How do you use BP Oil Spill?

The classic format is a mock PR tweet in @BPGlobalPR's smug voice, often tagged #bpcares, treating a disaster as a minor image problem.

Is BP Oil Spill still popular?

The meme peaked between May and September 2010 during the leak and had a second surge around the November 2012 guilty plea, and today it reads mostly as a period piece about early Twitter parody.

Who ran the @BPGlobalPR account?

The operator went by "Terry" in interviews and later "Leroy Stick" on the blog Street Giant, and while Wired's Matt Honan pointed at designer Mike Monteiro, Monteiro denied writing it.

How many followers did @BPGlobalPR have?

Close to 150,000 by June 9, 2010, when BP tried to have the account clearly labeled as parody, versus roughly 5,000 for BP's real feed at that stage.

BP pleaded guilty to 14 criminal charges including 11 felonies and paid a $4.5 billion penalty, described as the largest criminal resolution in U.S. history at the time.

Why was the dead whale controversial?

A sperm whale was found 77 miles from the spill site in June 2010, and internal emails told researchers not to share photos, which only came out after a Greenpeace FOIA request in 2012).

What hashtag did the meme use?

The signature hashtag was #bpcares, used by @BPGlobalPR on its sarcastic tweets about the disaster.

Bp Oil Spill

2010eventclassic

Published August 16, 2026

The BP Oil Spill, tied to the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, became an internet lightning rod thanks to the parody Twitter account @BPGlobalPR, which drew nearly 150,000 followers by mocking BP's real public-relations feed. Alongside the sarcastic tweets and #bpcares hashtag, image macros, comics, and Urban Dictionary slang turned the leak into one of 2010's defining online moments of corporate mockery.

corporate mockery memes sarcasm memes twitter memes early 2010s memes hashtag memes

Overview

The BP Oil Spill entered internet culture as both a real-world catastrophe and a running joke. On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, and by the time BP sealed the well in September, roughly 205.8 million gallons of crude had poured into the ocean4. As BP's public-relations team put out carefully worded statements, users on Twitter and blogs turned the gap between corporate messaging and reality into fodder for sarcastic tweets, image macros, and comics4.

The most recognizable piece of the meme was @BPGlobalPR, a parody Twitter account that pretended to be BP's PR staff and posted increasingly bleak jokes about the disaster1. Its author, using the pseudonyms "Terry" and later "Leroy Stick," ran the account as a form of protest, arguing BP was flooding the internet with hollow talking points instead of hard answers2. Alongside the parody feed, Urban Dictionary entries reworked "BP Oil Spill" into slang for any giant mess, from a hallway vomit incident to bathroom disasters6.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Real-world event (Gulf of Mexico) / Twitter (viral spread via @BPGlobalPR)

Key People

Leroy Stick

Date

2010

The physical event started on April 20, 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon rig, leased to BP in 2001, exploded after erosion involving mud and methane4. Two days later a second explosion sank the rig, and the Coast Guard soon reported crude oil escaping from a broken riser 5,000 feet below the surface4. Peak leak estimates ran as high as 2.6 million gallons per day before the well was capped that September4.

The meme angle appeared in early May 2010 when @BPGlobalPR launched on Twitter to mock the tone of BP's official @BP_America account1. Within weeks the parody had tens of thousands of followers, dwarfing BP's real feed, and Mashable published an in-character email interview on May 27, 2010 with the anonymous operator, who called himself "Terry" and refused to break character2.

How It Spread

CNN covered the parody account on May 26, 2010, noting it had roughly 38,000 followers while BP's real handle sat around 5,0004. Days later, The Daily Beast ran a side-by-side of tweets from both accounts, asking readers to guess which was real4. On June 2, 2010, a manifesto signed "Leroy Stick" appeared on the blog Street Giant, framing the parody as a rebuke of empty corporate PR4.

Twitter itself stepped in on June 9, 2010, at BP's request, asking the anonymous operator to make it clearer that the account was not affiliated with the company1. The bio was rewritten to read, "We are not associated with Beyond Petroleum, the company that has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico for 51 days"1. By that point the parody had almost 150,000 followers versus BP's few thousand, and coverage of the takedown request only pulled in more attention1.

The broader online reaction went far past a single Twitter account. A Facebook group calling for a BP boycott gathered more than 772,000 likes by November 20124. Greenpeace filed a Freedom of Information Act request in August 2010, and the images it eventually pried loose, including photos of oiled sea turtles and a decomposing sperm whale found 77 miles from the spill site, drove another wave of online anger years after the well was sealed5.

How to Use This Meme

The BP Oil Spill meme had two common flavors. The first was straight parody in the @BPGlobalPR template: a tweet in the voice of a smug, out-of-touch corporate PR staffer, often tagged with #bpcares, treating a catastrophe as a minor image problem1. The second was slang usage, where "a BP oil spill" was used on Urban Dictionary and in casual conversation for any large, disgusting mess6.