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Ratio

2017

Published March 10, 2026

The Ratioor Ratioed refers to an unofficial Twitterlaw which states that if the amount of replies to a tweet greatly outnumbers the number of retweets and likes, then the tweet is bad.

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Overview

The Ratioor Ratioed refers to an unofficial Twitterlaw which states that if the amount of replies to a tweet greatly outnumbers the number of retweets and likes, then the tweet is bad. Additionally, " to ratio" a tweet means to make a quote retweet or reply that manages to get more likes and retweets than the quoted post.

How It Spread

On April 11th, Luke O' Neil of Esquirepublished an article in which he outlined the theory of The Ratio, bringing the theory its widest audience yet. O' Neil reference d several tweets related the the United Airlines Passenger Removalas examples of The Ratio at work. He illustrated how United Airlines' tweeted response about the incident gained over 61,000 replies and merely 6,700 likes, and that the 10:1 ratio was evidence of the tweet's poor reception. The Independentwrote about O' Neil's Ratio Law two days after the article was published in Esquire. Following O' Neil's article,Weird Twitter and leftist Twitter began to take notice of ratios on particularly bad or controversial tweets.