Ratio is Twitter (now X) slang with two related senses. In the original sense, a post is ratioed when “the amount of replies to a tweet greatly outnumbers” its likes and retweets (Know Your Meme). In the later sense, to ratio someone is to make a reply that gets more likes or retweets than the original post (Know Your Meme). Both mean the crowd sided against the original poster.
Origin
- Early 2017. Know Your Meme says the Ratio, an “unofficial Twitter law”, began being noticed on Twitter in early 2017.
- March 15, 2017. User @Brilligerent tweeted that if a tweet’s replies outnumber its retweets by more than 2:1, “you done messed up” (Know Your Meme).
- April 11, 2017. Luke O’Neil of Esquire published an article outlining the theory, giving it its widest audience. His examples included United Airlines’ tweeted response to the passenger-removal incident, which drew “over 61,000 replies and merely 6,700 likes” (Know Your Meme).
- November 22, 2017. Dictionary.com’s entry cites a Washington Post line from that date: “Never has so much ratioing left the internet all at once” (Dictionary.com).
Meaning
| Sense | What is measured | Who “wins” | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original (2017) | Replies vs. likes and retweets on one post | Nobody; many replies signal a bad post | Know Your Meme, Dictionary.com |
| Reply ratio | Likes on a reply vs. likes on the original | The replier | Know Your Meme, Bustle |
Dictionary.com defines the noun as “the proportion of replies to a tweet”, where a high ratio “usually indicates a barrage of negative replies”, and the verb as “to flood (a tweet or its author) with negative replies”.
How It’s Used
Bustle describes the modern move: a user “replies ‘ratio’ to a comment they disagree with”, and it works if the reply gets “more likes than the original tweet”. Bustle says that on TikTok it “happens in the comments section of viral videos most often”.
L + ratio. A reply that “begins with ‘L,’ meaning loss,” followed by “ratio” (Know Your Meme). It grew as “a mostly text-based reply on Twitter”, and Know Your Meme lists its year as 2021.
Recent Developments
On June 12, 2024, X made likes private: users can still see their own likes, “but others will not”. The option “was previously just available to paying Premium subscribers” (AP via News4JAX).
See also #Ratio.
Sources
- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-ratio
- https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ratio
- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/l-ratio-you-fell-off
- https://www.bustle.com/life/what-does-ratio-mean-on-tiktok
- https://www.news4jax.com/business/2024/06/12/what-happened-to-the-likes-x-is-now-hiding-which-posts-you-like-from-other-users/