A fly that landed on Mike Pence’s head during Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate has already amassed 90,000 followers on Twitter.
The six-legged insect made an impromptu appearance on Pence’s silver-white hair toward the end of the debate with Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris, and stayed there for a full two minutes.
Sure enough, a short while later, a Twitter account showed up with the name “Mike Pence’s Fly.”
Within just a couple of hours, and with only a handful of silly posts to its name, the account was heading swiftly toward its first 100,000 followers — a figure many human Twitter users will be eyeing with envy.
https://twitter.com/MikePenceFly___/status/1314064378799349762
Although plenty of serious analysis of the political showdown could of course be found across all of the major social media platforms on Wednesday night, the fact that Twitter’s top 10 trending topics suddenly included “flies,” “TheFly,” “FLY2020,” and even “flygate,” may have offered a clue as to what many viewers felt about the quality of the debate.
The unexpected insect event easily ended up generating the most, ahem, buzz of the entire evening, unleashing a torrent of creativity on the internet that included an array of amusing memes, GIFs, and quips. And no doubt Jeff Goldblum is already dusting off his costume for an imminent appearance on Saturday Night Live.
With the next presidential debate fast approaching, the fly incident can surely only be topped by a large bumblebee making an unscheduled landing on President Donald Trump’s snoot.
Digital Trends has reached out to Pence’s fly for comment, but we don’t think we’ll be hearing back anytime soon.