What does ‘ratioed’ mean on Twitter and why is everyone saying it?

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What does ‘ratioed’ mean on Twitter and why is everyone saying it?

You got ratioed by Taylor 😩

If you’ve spent any time on Twitter, you will have seen a repeated phrase floating around. It is a word that is practically synonymous with the stans of big musical artists currently, whether that be Taylor Swift versus Kanye, Nicki versus Cardi B and so on, but it also lives in the comments any time the Twitter mob turns against someone for having a sh*tty take. We are, of course, talking about being “ratioed” by someone.

However, there are a lot of questions to be answered. What does being “ratioed” mean? Where did the term “ratioed” originate from? Why is EVERYONE repeating the word “ratioed” every single time I open the damn app?!

She has been completely ratioed

What does “ratioed” mean?

So, now we’ve established that you’ve seen it everywhere, why does everyone always comment “ratioed”? Well, it means exactly what you probably assumed.

When someone makes a statement that many people disagree with on Twitter, you know that they’re more than likely going to get an influx of comments telling them how wrong they are. When the comments pile up, it brings the ratio of comments to likes to a huge disparity, which can look a little like this:

So in a nutshell, being ratioed is having very little likes compared to comments, and it’s a very clear signal that someone has little support for what they’re saying and a lot of riled up responses in their mentions.

Where did “ratioed” come from?

Used as a strictly numerical term for hundreds of years, Merriam Webster dates the use of ratio as a verb back to the early 1920s, where its earliest recorded use was in a newspaper: “Speed ratioed. The fastest horse has run a mile in about 95 seconds; a railway train has covered the distance in 30 seconds… and an airplane in 11 seconds.”

The word first started being used commonly on Twitter in 2017, and was popularised further as a saying when Esquire did a piece about the theory of the ratio.

The phrase has had small reemergences online ever since, including currently where it seems to be everywhere, and that’s about all there is to it.

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