When did "Delete your account" become a cute, hip thing to say to somebody on Twitter?

I don't know, but I read a whole article in the NYT that looked into the "Delete your account" trend (after Hillary Clinton used it on Donald Trump).

Presumably, the flat but supposedly snappy "Delete your account" response is a way to respond to a tweet that is so bad that person who published it is best advised to quit using Twitter forever. What Trump tweet — of his 30+ thousand tweets — was selected by Hillary['s people] as a platform for demonstrating her awareness of what the kids are saying these days? It was: "Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama—but nobody else does!"

And why did the NYT choose to write an article about "Delete your account"? Is the phrase that amusing — a Twitter-specific shut up (or fuck you)? Trump's tweet is original and humorous, and Clinton's go-to-hell response was not just a stock phrase — if perhaps a stock phrase NYT readers didn't know yet — it made her seem like what she and Elizabeth Warren are intent upon getting us to think Donald Trump is: thin-skinned.

And Trump's response to her "Delete your account" was also original and funny, and it contained 2 pointed observations that should have made her wish she [her people] had never said that: "How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?" Did no one pause to ask: Is "delete" a good word for me or are there some associations with "delete" that could be thrown back at me? Apparently not.

Anyway, The New York Times informs us that "Delete your account" "has a long history as a dismissive rejoinder, especially on Twitter," but it doesn't tell us how long, where it started, or any other details of its history, like what kind of people tend to say it, when they've been saying it, and if the history is so long that some people — the coolest people? — regard it as stale and groan-worthy. And what about the whole history of old people adopting the slang of the young and how that tends not to be too well received?

Instead, the Times gives us:

Mrs. Clinton’s missive, likely written and sent by her campaign staff, quickly became one of the most widely shared tweets of the 2016 campaign. It was precisely the kind of tweet that political junkies, and anyone else checking Twitter for a midday distraction, thirsts for in the middle of the afternoon when they’d prefer to think about something other than work.

Precisely what we're thirsting for? It's so embarrassingly obvious that the NYT wants to boost Hillary that I could end this post with whatever would be the closing-down-a-newspaper equivalent of "Delete your account" — Fold your newspaper — but I need The New York Times. What would I talk about without The New York Times? And, in fact, I have something completely else that I want to say about this article.

The text is entirely about the "Delete your account" tweet, but at the top of it is an embedded video titled "Clinton Revels in Obama's Endorsement" in which we hear Clinton accepting Obama's endorsement with an astounding lack of enthusiasm. Listen to this:



"It is, uh, absolutely a joy and an honor..." She doesn't sound the slightest bit joyful. There's no revelry. It sounds like a struggle to say something appropriate.

Ah, but let's not look too closely at that. Let's talk about how she [her people] got off that "Delete your account" response to Trump.