Drunk Nate Silver Takes Off as Twitter Meme

We reported yesterday that social networks were abuzz with New York Times blogger Nate Silver’s success predicting the outcome of the presidential election. Today, the meme has morphed into a #drunkNateSilver (or drunk Nate Silver) predicting — well pretty much everything.

Twitter users are also bemused by the appearance of some promoted tweets from the New York Times alongside their searches for #drunkNateSilver.

The company “purchased many terms related to Times political coverage including some very general terms related to Nate and the FiveThirtyEight blog” as “part of a social media marketing campaign … to help drive engagement with our election 2012 coverage,” according to spokeswoman Eileen Murphy.

Here are some of the tweets:

Drunk Nate Silver stumbles through traffic on the Jersey Turnpike, screaming out what time each driver will get home. #DrunkNateSilver

— Dave Levitan (@davelevitan) November 8, 2012

drunk nate silver sighing loudly while looking over a russian lady’s shoulder as she does sudoku on the subway

— max read (@max_read) November 8, 2012

Drunk Nate Silver predicted the exact date that someone would touch MC Hammer. #drunknatesilver

— Brendan Honeycutt (@brendan_as_art) November 8, 2012

Don’t bother giving the Breathalyzer Test to Drunk Nate Silver. He knows what he’ll blow to the ten thousandth percent. #DrunkNateSilver

— Don Van Natta Jr. (@DVNJr) November 8, 2012

drunk nate silver doing a 3 am webinar for his ex with charts and graphs that should finally make it clear

— Sarah Pavis (@spavis) November 8, 2012

One user is calling for a game of “One Degree of Drunk Nate Silver separation.”