Hillary Clinton makes social media waves by sending her own Text From Hillary

Here and Now

In recent days the Tumblr blog Texts From Hillary has made waves for its satirical, imaginative rendering of what text messages from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would look like.

The meme got started with a single photo, taken by a photographer from Reuters, of Clinton in sunglasses aboard a military C-17 plane travelling from Malta to Tripoli, Libya, cell phone in hand. The texts imagine a conversation between Clinton and other politicians and stars. In one, for example, a photo of President Barack Obama and Vice President Obama says “She’s going to love the new Justin Bieber video!” to which Clinton responds “Back to work boys.”

In another, a photo of Mark Zuckerberg walking with his phone says “Guess what I bought!” — a reference to Facebook’s $1 billion purchase on Instagram. Clinton’s image says “A shirt with a big boy collar?” Zuckerberg is known for wearing T-shirts on most occasions.

The meme, though, officially went mainstream Tuesday when Clinton submitted her own Text From Hillary and even met with founders Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe. In her submission, Clinton said “sup Adam. nice selfie Stace :-)” The two reply “omg…busted” and “sry Hillz”. Clinton replies “ROFL @ ur Tumblr! g2g scrunchie time. ttyl?!”

Smith and Lambe said Clinton’s PR team reached out to them on Monday about posting their own message. The pair met Clinton on Tuesday.

Rumors have been swirling that Clinton will mount a presidential campaign in 2016 — and the Tumblr has provided the sort of free publicity — as a no-nonsense leader keeping the world in line — that a campaign can only dream of.

Incidentally, according to what Smith and Lambe told the media blog Mashable, Clinton was partial to the submission imagining a conversation between her and Ryan Gosling.

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