that many of her most popular tweets played on the 2020 presidential election. During the recount, she posted a screenshot of Leslie Knope saying, “Well, math is hard.” A day later, when Donald Trump had officially lost, she posted a meme of Donna Meagle saying, “You’re fired.”” writer and producer Brittani Nichols says no context accounts allow fans to “put their own spin” on their favorite series: “It gives the show a life of its own outside of traditional broadcasting and streaming.
“My favorite part of running the ‘Parks’ account is getting to talk to other fans,” Kaysi says. “It’s nice to see how even seven years after the show, there’s still such a community for it. To be able to pop online and be like, ‘Li’l Sebastian died 11 years ago today’… we’re all crying about a fictional horse.”
When punching up scripts, television writers are obviously not thinking about which lines will land best on Twitter. But Nichols says seeing her jokes go viral online is nonetheless a treat. “We don’t write to get memed. We don’t write lines specifically thinking that they would make a good screenshot, but when they do, it’s certainly something that I think everyone enjoys.”
Managing no context accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers is no easy job. Golez says when new episodes of “Succession” came out, she watched them “once for me and twice to get screenshots.” Kaysi maintains an organized system of folders on her computer filled with “Parks and Recreation” screengrabs labeled by episode and tagged with keywords so they’re easy to find.
To take it a step further, Netflix has adopted the no context trend for its official marketing strategy for high-school dramedy “Sex Education.” With more than 400,000 followers, the Twitter-verified no context account is wildly popular, but it’s also been met with some resistance.