A Massive, Pointless Link Chain Has Taken Over Twitter - Here's How It Ends

Logan Hasson, a teaching assistant and software developer, has created a map of a massive link chain that has taken over part of Twitter.

You might have seen the joke appear in your Twitter news feed: Someone tweets that you've just got to see this shocking controversial thing right NOW, but when you click on the link it only takes you to someone else's tweet, which says something similar ... and ... if you keep clicking ... you eventually end up at a dead link/404 page.

Hasson wanted to see just how big the chain was. So he made a program to map it. It's huge. It looks like this (click to enlarge):

If you want to see the originals in more detail, find them here.

Turns out the average number of links in the chain is 18 - which is pretty impressive given that each person in the chain has to "get" the joke and change their link to the status update they originally saw it in.

The chain ends at this pointless status update from conservative blogger Ben Howe. It links to this dead 404 page.

Howe is no stranger to trolling. He once accused a fellow conservative of having sex with animals - which led to this diatribe.

Hasson has offered his code to anyone who wants it on Github - meaning it can be used, presumably, to map the virality of any tweets you want.