99 bottles of beer on the wall 99 bottles of beer

— Drunk Diane Sawyer (@DrnkDianeSawyer) November 7, 2012

im not drunk u gusys r dunk — Drunk Diane Sawyer (@DrnkDianeSawyer) November 7, 2012

While tiredness rather than tippling likely caused Sawyer’s condition, the Twitter account provided a fun way to record a micro-meme that sprung up on election night. Sawyer wasn’t the only source of fun. Nate Silver, whose 538 blog overshadowed his employer The New York Times on election night, became a target too. Here’s how a satirist cleverly mocked the pollster’s portentousness and the public’s sudden fixation with data driven reporting:

Now is the nowcast of our forecasts, made glorious projection by this mean of polls.

— Nate Silver 2.0 (@fivethirtynate) November 6, 2012

I grasp from the beak of a silver dove a laurel wreath of finely-wrought permutations. The Signal has come at last.

— Nate Silver 2.0 (@fivethirtynate) November 7, 2012

Drunk Diane and fake Nate are fleeting by their nature — they cause a chuckle and then vanish in days or months. But one day they may also carry historical significance in the same way that newspaper cartoons serve as a vital tool for political scholars. Consider how well these spoof tweets sum up a central narrative of the 2012 election — the Republicans lost because they couldn’t broaden their demographic base:

We were going to retake the Senate, but Republicans have a way of shutting that whole process down. #Akin #Mourdock #election2012

— Willard Mitt Romney (@MlTTR0MNEY) November 7, 2012

Wait! Wait! Stop everything! We found the Whitey Tape!! #4moreyears

— Willard Mitt Romney (@MlTTR0MNEY) November 7, 2012

(Image by  jbor via Shutterstock)

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