Cirque du Twerque

Welcome to the CdT wiki!

Cirque du Twerque is a closed Facebook group with over 9,000 members. The group focuses mainly on tech-related memes.

This wiki is a dumpyard for all information on all the dankest memes in Cirque du Twerque.

Check out this post for wiki information.

History

Old Circletwerk

Cirque du Twerque started out as HH Circlejerk, which was originally an HH humor subgroup. Due to complaints about the original title, the name changed to HH Circletwerk.

Migration to HH Cirque du Twerque

In July of 2015, admin drama caused many users to leave HH Circletwerk and create other subgroups, such as HH Circletwerk 2.0, demanding more fair moderation. The turning point for HH Circletwerk was when the owner of the group removed every admin and disabled posting with no notice.

Lily Sellers, a frequent memer in HH Circletwerk, decided to jump on this opportunity to spark a revolution and found a new meme group, HH Circlesmirk. This is why Lily is commonly referred to as "queen", "senpai", "mom", etc.

Once the new group was created, the Meme Queen informed her fellow revolutionaries – David the Dank Lord, Mike the Trump Card, Stephanie the Supreme Shit-poster. The four of them together were the original mods of HH Circlesmirk. They, as well as many others before them, believed that moderation and any decision that may affect the group should be decided by majority vote.

The new group gained a considerable following over only a few days, after which the mods decided to create a poll to decide on what the community wanted the group name to be. Everyone was allowed to add options to the poll as well as vote. However, to keep everything fair and unbiased, the mods opt out of every vote. This is how HH Circlesmirk came to be HH Cirque du Twerque.

Removal of HH from Cirque du Twerque

In December 2015, the actions of a certain HH admin angered many people in the HH community, including many members of HHCdT. On December 13, 2015, said HH admin released the following statement:

For the past year and a half, I've had the opportunity to build this community with incredible people. They taught me so much.

When we built that team, I hoped that rule by committee of equals would be the most effective way to build the community. I was wrong.

The community suffered due to inaction. Marginalized people left the group en masse, many of the most active members left for the subgroups, and the team was ineffective at changing that.

My failure to communicate effectively with the team and the community itself caused this. I apologize for letting the community get to this point.

These changes should have happened long ago and they should have been communicated with the admin team. The fact that I felt the need to remove another admin unilaterally to make this change was my own fault. I made a mistake.

My intention isn't to take over as eternal dictator of HH. Nor is it to turn this into a business. I didn't do this for power or money. I did this because I thought it was best for the community. There was definitely a better way.

Moving forward, we’ll be transitioning power to the subgroup leaders and the community itself. You can read more about the plan here: https://medium.com/hackathon-hackers/giving-hackathon-hackers-back-to-the-community-c77cebda92e6#.mslxrqiv8

Community members can nominate moderators. Subgroup leaders will elect both the moderation team and the admin who will lead HH.

I won't be running in the election at the start of the New Year. My sole role will be to ensure that elections are fair, that the transition of power is smooth, and that no one is ever able to do what I did again.

This apology was not taken well by the HHCdT community, and as a result, this became a copypasta and HH Cirque du Twerque became Cirque du Twerque. Many other HH subgroups made changes as well, including:

• HH Hacker Problems -> Hacker Problems
• Real Singles of HH -> Sovereign State of Real Singles
• HH Cats -> Real Cats of CdT
• Hackathon Hackers (purist subgroup) -> Hackers -> HX

Dishwasher controversy

In January of 2016, the following meme, in style of the How Should a Dog Wear Pants? meme, was posted to CdT:

/hh the following link may offend some people

This meme caused a lot of controversy among CdT members, and many claimed that the meme was misogynistic as it implies that women should stay in the kitchen as dish-washers. On the other hand, other CdT members, including women, claimed that such humor should not be taken seriously on a shitposting group. Others decided to leave CdT all together, claiming the environment "promoted sexism".

One member went on a full-blown rant defending their friend and threatening to leave if they "saw this misogynistic shit ever again", creating the Friend of Mine copypasta. However, CdT remains strong to this day.

Mod Elections of 2016

In May of 2016, CdT reached 5,000 members, which meant a new mod was to be elected. This was a big deal so hella people made tons of memes and effortposted their way to the top. Some even did memes in the style of Bernie or Hillary? between eachother. All "attack" ads were meant in good nature. Eventually it was narrowed down to three candidates.

The elections turned tense when a member made a personal attack on one of the candidates and threatened to "leave CdT and never look back, you have my word". Due to building tension, the mods at the time decided to prematurely end the elections, and making all top three candidates moderators.

The Great Rap Battle of 2016

In May of 2016 around the time of The Mod Elections of 2016 a rap battle broke out when local 9 year old, Andy Kamath dropped a soundcloud link titled "Views From The 9". It was met with rave reviews including "I can't believe you've done this", "I don't want to live on this planet anymore", and "tihs(sic) is not that bad". The following is the fallout of the dropping of the K-Bomb.

• The original: Views From The 9 - Andy Kamath
• The remix: Views From The 9 - Olivia Scharfman
• Another rap: Fucking don't even bother making anymore CDT raps - Peyrameshwar Naz
• The fire whisperer: Pusheen - Thierry Rutaganira
• The undisputed GOAT: Diss-Claimer. - Jonathan Kingsley
• Response to JFK: Back To Baesics - Andy Kamath
• A Pleasant Response - Jonathan Kingsley
• american, bitch - Andy Kamath

Post Aesthetics Controversy

After some complaints from various CdT members, Post Aesthetics reputation got worse and worse. In particular, it became a well known page for having hyper-sensitive admins. In addition, the page favors PoC (People of Color) over white people, calling upon white people to "check their privilege" and "stay in their lane." Almost always, people who differ in opinion with the admins get banned from the page. Regardless of the reputation, members from CdT always post memes and roast admins from PA and expose them.

In one incident, a PA (Post Aesthetics) admin promised a CdT member to un-ban them in exchange for completing their CS assignment. However, upon joining CdT, the admin said that he was just joking.

Three PA admins ended up joining CdT and shitposting like everyone else, leading everyone to believe that they probably seem like cool people despite their dysfunctional group admin policies and causing a brief resurgence of the FitnessGram™ Pacer Test meme.

After PA itself devolved into internal chaos, a splinter group formed named Post Post Post Post Aesthetics. Many CdT members were a part of this group initially -- however, P4A (as the group was now dubbed) infiltrated CdT once again, cross-referencing the member lists and banning every single member of P4A who also happened to be in CdT. In addition, numerous complaints arose among CdT members of the Overlord of P4A threatening to doxx them, with photographic evidence, spawning debates on whether to report the group's activities to Facebook.

Eventually admins of P4A were weeded out until a post by a CdT member that included the name of a P4A admin no one had yet really talked about brought to light what is believed to have been the last remaining P4A admin in CdT. That admin, upon being exposed, made a post asking why the two groups couldn't simply leave each other alone. A CdT admin wrote many paragraphs on CdT's grievances with P4A, which led to the P4A admin creating a post offering to readd certain members of CdT back to P4A who were banned on principle rather than for any specific offense. As of July 21st, 2016, tensions between PA/P4A and CdT are at an all-time low.

/pa cw: memes

/pa cw: witchhunt

The Great Mic Drop... Or So We Thought

The outward manifestation of the Post Aesthetics controversy came to an ending as abrupt as its beginning. Earlier, a moderator of the group had posted "50 likes and I ban _______", jokingly referring to a member for whom the ban decision had already been made. One of the PA admins who had joined in the Great Post Aesthetics Controversy of 2016, in what was to be his last shitposting effort ever in CdT, posted "50 likes and I ban me forever". The post exceeded 100 likes, and said PA admin had no choice but to unironically follow through with his post, creating the single greatest mic drop of the past few months in CdT [citation needed]. But we had no idea of what was to come...

50 likes and i ban me forever

The Mic Drop To Rule Them All

On May 27, 2016, a prominent memer and admin of the community conducted a social experiment, promising to ban himself if his thread got 100 angry reactions:

the thread

The thread ended up getting to 100 angry reactions in just over half an hour and the member followed through with his promise with this rationale, thus proving himself to be a martyr, silent guardian, a dark knight, the hero we needed but not the one we deserved.

rationale

/uj well, you did it. I'm leaving. why am I leaving? because I am a man of my word. why did I test this policy? for the sake of democracy, and to make this group a more crowd-driven, self-regulatting, and fair place. this was also an exercise in the meaning of the /uj prefix. I repeat: when we use /uj, we're serious. keep it that way. since this proved to be a successful social experiment, I will be writing the rule into the sidebar, and it will hopefully be enforced while I'm gone. no, mod elections are not happening. I'll miss you all.

HH Meme Freeze

On June 6, 2016, the following post was posted in HH by an admin:

The modpost

[serious]

By popular demand, the mods and I have decided to put HH on a meme freeze. We plan for it to be a temporary ban to show all members how awesome HH is without the bad programmer repost jokes clouding up their feed.

What does this mean for you? If you see a meme, shitpost, or bad programmer joke, report it to the admins and we will ban the poster and delete the post.

You are encouraged to report older posts that fit these criteria, but anything posted before this new rule will only be deleted, and poster will not be banned.

This meme freeze was greatly mocked by CdT, especially in relation to meme freezes occuring shortly afterwards in CdT, related to the tragedies in Orlando and Nice.

CdT Meme Freezes

After the tragedy that occurred in Orlando in 2016, moderators polled CdT and large majority voted to disallow memes related to the event. The minority, however, was outraged by this and arguments over whether the freeze was the right thing to do dominated discussion in CdT for a few days. A member of CdT was even banned for breaking the freeze (although other circumstances also contributed to this ban).

After the subsequent terror attack in Nice, posts were made by CdT mods condemning those who meme about the attack. However several memes have been posted in CdT related to Nice without incidence, indicating that this second freeze is less harsh than the first.

CdT Subgroups

CdT has spawned many, many subgroups and splinter groups all with varying purposes. Most are compiled here.

Demographic

Cirque du Twerque is very popular among college-aged students, many of them being Computer Science and/or Computer Engineering majors, and some high school students. For an unknown reason, many of the college-aged members attend college or live in the state of Illinois. Some CdT members attend other state universities as well as Ivy Leagues, renowned engineering schools and even liberal arts schools.

Despite the lack of women in technology, CdT is an inclusive environment, and many of the moderators and top-tier shitposters are women. Thus, girls do like CdT.