What is the ‘this tweet has been deleted’ rule? Does it really make tweets funnier?

Wiping a regrettable tweet from the internet isn’t as easy as it sounds, as one Twitter user is currently reminding us all. Because even when we hit that almighty “delete” button, most of what we say (and post) still lives on in the archives forever — and can be retrieved, screenshotted and preserved forever by anyone determined enough to find it.

This was recently pointed out by a Twitter user who called out the undeniable humor that results when someone posts a screenshot of an old tweet that someone else tried to erase, along with the message that now exists in its place: “This tweet has been deleted.”

“‘This tweet has been deleted’ makes s*** 10x more funny,” the user said in a recent post — and, honestly, she’s not wrong.

People are now replying to the tweet by sharing the funniest “deleted tweet” messages they’ve come across, and they’re all pretty hilarious.

Most seem to convey an unspoken sense of regret, embarrassment or shame about what they previously posted.

Sometimes, the tweet was deleted because the original poster said something not so smart and later realized the error of their ways.

Other times, it’s a good old-fashioned typo that causes a Twitter user to scramble for the delete button.

Many examples shared by Twitter users are pretty cringeworthy — like this one shared by someone clearly trying to do something bold but who later backed down:

Or this person, who vowed to “be a better man today” and then apparently wasn’t able to deliver:

But not all deleted tweets are shared by private users.

The fact is, even if these deleted tweets no longer display in a user’s timeline, they can still be found by internet sleuths either quick enough to screenshot them before they’re taken down or clever enough to use other online tools, like the WayBack Machine, to retrieve them.

As Know Your Meme explains, this is now known as the “this tweet has been deleted tweet” rule, which refers to how an embarrassing tweet will never truly be forgotten, thanks to the way Twitter users operate.

Consider yourself warned.

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