2010 Tweet 'Enjoying The Chungus Among Us' Sparks Time Travel Debate On Social Media

May 6th, 2021 - 3:51 PM EDT by Phillip Hamilton

3 comments | Contact Newsroom

2010 tweet reading 'enjoying the chungus among us' over time travel background

A tweet from February 6th, 2010, reading "enjoying the chungus among us," a reference to two popular modern memes, has recently been discovered by social media users, sparking a lot of heated debate online about its possible origins.


On May 2nd, Instagram meme page @big_chungles posted a screenshot of the tweet from @elpablogrande, aka Paul Anderson, gaining over 5,800 likes in four days and sparking immediate debate in the comments about its legitimacy. The screenshot was shared a number of times on social media in the days following, sparking masses of new users to visit the original post, running up the likes and retweets. The tweet now boasts over 17,000 likes and 7,500 retweets, plus over 1,300 quote tweets and numerous comments making jokes and expressing confusion about it, with most users settling on time travel as the answer.


Paul's tweet pre-dates both the video game Among Us and Big Chungus, the memes it seems to reference, by nearly a decade, making it look like a fake to some. Inputting the tweet's URL into the Wayback Machine shows a number of comments posted on it from as early as December 2020, showing that this is not the first time that the tweet has confused users. To add another layer to the puzzle, a 2010 tweet from @sheelgetshyphy reading, "there is a chungus among us," previously resurfaced in 2020, sparking the same sort of debates. A further search for the term "chungus among us" between the dates of 2010-2017 (2017 being the year before Among Us and Big Chungus) shows a number of additional tweets using the phrase. While assuming time travel is the case for all of these is the most fun answer, the true answer to the "chungus among us" riddle is likely much more simple.


One user suggests the tweet could be a fake due to it reading that it was posted via "Twitter Web Client," although this theory has been debated. Another user suggests the tweet is a typo, meant to read, "Enjoying the Fungus Amongus," the name of a 1995 album by Incubus, as another possibility.


Another theory points to video game reviewer Jim Sterling as the inspiration for the tweets. The term "chungus," essentially meaning "fat," was popularized by Sterling as early as 2010, used frequently in his livestreams. It's possible the term "chungus among us" was said by Sterling during a livestream, a theory that is supported by a number of people tweeting the phrase at him between 2010 and 2017. It's also possible that "among us" simply rhymes with "chungus" in a funny way, resulting in the tweets after hearing "chungus" spoken by Sterling. Either way, the presence of the word "chungus" is most likely in reference to Sterling, with the presence of "among us" likely being a coincidence.


Whether these tweets are a complete coincidence or not, it appears the chungus has been among us for longer than many memers realize, and this is just a fact that we're all going to have to learn to cope with.



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