About
Pope Bars, often used in its hashtag form #PopeBars, refers to user-created rhymes that accompany a photograph of Pope Francis where he is holding a modern wireless microphone in a manner that emulates the manner in which performers of Rap / Hip Hop often do. In Fall 2015, these types of rhymes were often posted on Twitter.
Origin
On Monday, November 30th, Pope Francis toured Bangui, which is the capital of the Central African Republic, where he urged the people to reconcile a long-held civil war. During his visit, he was photographed by Gianluigi Guercia in a photograph that was then distributed by Getty Images to newspapers and publications worldwide. [1]
Bars is a term used to refer to rhyming lyrics in rap or hip hop.[10]
Spread
African Black Twitter users began tweeting the hashtag/lyric combination at around 5:45 AM, Eastern Standard Time, and some notable tweets, including those by users thvpelo[2] and JussDaTip,[3] receiving in the thousands and hundreds of retweets and favorites, respectively. Within 15 hours, the hashtag had been used more than 66,000 times on Twitter.[4] The trend quickly received notice by the mainstream media, including articles in Vanity Fair,[5] Vibe,[6] and Mashable.[7]
Notable Examples
Search Interest
Note: Search results were not available for popebars as all one word, which is how it’s usually used, however there were minimal results for the two words separately.
External References
[1]Getty Images – Gianluigi Guercia’s profile
[2]Twitter – thvpelo’s tweet
[3]Twitter – JussDaTip’s tweet
[4]Topsy – #PopeBars metrics
[5]Vanity Fair – PopeBars: Twitter Users Write Lyrics for Image of Pope Francis with Microphone
[6]Vibe – Sanctified Spitter: This Picture Inspired The Hilarious Hashtag #PopeBars On Twitter
[7]Mashable – #PopeBars meme is the holy answer your dreams of a hip-hop Pope Francis
[8]Twitter – Tags: #PopeBars
[9]Facebook – Topics: #PopeBars