# Superb Owl Superb Owl is an anagram-based joke where people flood social media with owl photos and content during the Super Bowl to derail football chatter. What began as a stray typo grew into an annual tradition, with birders, zoos and even Stephen Colbert using the phrase to sidestep the NFL's aggressive trademark enforcement. ## Origin The earliest documented online use came from Twitter user @shawnw, who tweeted "Superb Owl party tonight!" on February 3rd, 2008[4]. The joke was almost certainly older offline as a common typo, but @shawnw's post is the earliest indexed instance tied to game day. The community around the joke formed three years later. On February 6th, 2011, Redditor bennybuckethead created /r/superbowl with two rules: image posts must contain an owl, and text posts must be about owls[4]. Unlike the annual Twitter surge, the subreddit stays active year-round. - **Platform:** Twitter (typo joke) / Reddit (community formation) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2008 ## Overview Superb Owl is a one-letter shuffle of Super Bowl that turns the NFL's championship game into a bird. Every year on Super Bowl Sunday, users post owl photos, GIFs and puns tagged #SuperbOwl, capitalizing the O to distinguish the joke from an honest misspelling[1]. The gag works on two levels: it hijacks Super Bowl search traffic with wildlife content, and it lets brands sidestep the NFL's famously aggressive trademark policing[2]. The format is loose. There is no set image macro, just a shared convention that owl content posted during the game counts as a Superb Owl post. Nature accounts and zoos lean on real owl photography, while sports bars and small businesses use the phrase in ads to avoid takedown notices from the league[2]. Wiktionary even documents the term as a workaround for the NFL's litigiousness[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Superb Owl? Superb Owl is an anagram-based joke where users post owl content on Super Bowl Sunday to interrupt football conversation, typically under the hashtag #SuperbOwl[1]. ### Where did Superb Owl come from? The earliest known online reference is a February 3rd, 2008 tweet from @shawnw reading "Superb Owl party tonight!"[4]. ### What does Superb Owl mean? Wiktionary defines it as a way to reference the Super Bowl without infringing on the NFL's trademark, exploiting a one-letter anagram[3]. ### How do you use Superb Owl? Post owl photos, GIFs or puns on Super Bowl Sunday and tag them #SuperbOwl, capitalizing the O to signal the joke rather than a typo[1]. ### Is Superb Owl still popular? The joke recurs each Super Bowl Sunday, and /r/superbowl still enforces its owl-only posting rules year-round[4]. ## References 1. [https://x.com/i/status/1091869927642972161]() 2. [https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/super-bowl/2019/02/03/superb-owl-sunday-owls-overtake-social-media-typo-turned-meme/2763841002/]() 3. [https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=superb_owl&oldid=37391154]() 4. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/superb-owl]() 5. [https://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=6205]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/superb-owl Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library