May 7 was election day for our friends in the United Kingdom, giving them the crucial opportunity to decide who they wanted to govern the country for the next five years. However, perhaps many Twitter users on the other side of the Atlantic were too preoccupied with issues ranging from the economy to immigration to the European Union to notice that they were referring to the wrong year in their tweets!
For a while on the big day, the hashtag of #GE0215, which was clearly instead meant to say #GE2015, was trending in the UK. Many Twitter commenters using the hashtag seemed completely unaware of the error, given the serious commentary in their tweets – though, over time, more people started pointing out the mistake. One user, @GrantMenmuir, joked that “in #GE0215 I shall be voting for the continued leadership of our Roman Emperor, Antoninus.”
Judging from tweets of the trend analysis company Trendinalia UK at @trendinaliaGB, the hashtag might have originated from Armando Iannucci, a successful comedy writer in Britain who tweets under @Aiannucci.
