A FAMILIAR MEME. A NEW CONTEXT.
2017 meme mocking intrusive spam: in early December, bot accounts replied to tweets with hoverboard links. "Where can I buy a hoverboard?" became an ironic answer to any pushy ad, later joined by a kissing-couple comic template.
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In early December 2017, Twitter users noticed a wave of automated accounts replying to random tweets with links to hoverboards. According to a breakdown by the outlet TJournal from December 6, 2017, these replies appeared under all sorts of posts, and sometimes the bots even replied to each other. Users called them seller bots, which, according to the authors, had literally flooded the feed.
According to the catalog's description, the links were posted under tweets from popular bloggers. The TJournal article mentioned above doesn't feature any bloggers, so this detail remains unverified. The spam itself, however, was massive and conspicuous, which is what gave rise to the meme.
The meme arose as an ironic reaction to the spam. Users renamed accounts, wrote replies in the style of advertising bots, joked about the approaching New Year, and recalled the day's main topics. Gradually, the ad text became a stand-alone phrase. Who first came up with this reaction could not be established.
According to TJournal, one of the links led to a marketplace selling chargers and phone cases instead of hoverboards. This fact added to the irony: the ad turned out not to be what it promised, and users were happy to play on that.
The catalog's picture is a frame from a black-and-white comic with red accents, showing a kissing couple. The speech bubbles have been rewritten: the heroine asks to hear "the three main words," meaning a declaration of love, and the hero replies with the question "Want to buy a hoverboard?" This turns the romantic scene into a sales pitch.
The author of the comic itself is unknown, and the origin of this specific image has not been established. The template works well because the contrast between romance and advertising needs no explanation, which makes it easy to transfer to other situations.
The main reason for its popularity is the absurdity of the situation. The spam looked intrusive and pointless, and against that backdrop, any line about hoverboards became a symbol of pushy advertising. Since the bots' replies appeared under other people's posts, users easily noticed the comical repetition of the same phrases.
The meme also showed how internet jokes move into everyday speech. The phrase "Where can I buy a hoverboard?" became an ironic reply to any discussion that looks too much like an ad or too forced. Users carried it into conversations, comments, and picture captions, and it took hold as a short-hand sign of recognizable spam.
In the broadest sense, the phrase stands for a bot's standard pitch, imposed as a reply to any tweet. It keeps the structure of spam: a short question, a product name, and a total lack of connection to the context of the original post.
The image in the catalog matches the description: it shows a couple drawn in a comic style, with captions matching the meme. No discrepancies were found. The caveat concerns only the origin of the template, which has not been established.
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