Skip to main content

Mike Pence’s fly has already amassed 90,000 followers on Twitter

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.

i really did that pic.twitter.com/p5mTvt4gSz

— Mike Pence's Fly ????️‍???? (@MikePenceFly___) October 8, 2020

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.

Editors' Recommendations

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
How to go live on TikTok (and can you with under 1,000 followers?)
Tik Tok

It only takes a few steps to go live on TikTok and broadcast yourself to the world:

Touch the + button at the bottom of the screen.
Press the Live option under the record button.
Come up with a title for your live stream. 
Click Go Live to begin.

Read more
Bluesky barrels toward 1 million new sign-ups in a day
Bluesky social media app logo.

Social media app Bluesky has picked nearly a million new users just a day after exiting its invitation-only beta and opening to everyone.

In a post on its main rival -- X (formerly Twitter) -- Bluesky shared a chart showing a sudden boost in usage on the app, which can now be downloaded for free for iPhone and Android devices.

Read more
How to make a GIF from a YouTube video
woman sitting and using laptop

Sometimes, whether you're chatting with friends or posting on social media, words just aren't enough -- you need a GIF to fully convey your feelings. If there's a moment from a YouTube video that you want to snip into a GIF, the good news is that you don't need complex software to so it. There are now a bunch of ways to make a GIF from a YouTube video right in your browser.

If you want to use desktop software like Photoshop to make a GIF, then you'll need to download the YouTube video first before you can start making a GIF. However, if you don't want to go through that bother then there are several ways you can make a GIF right in your browser, without the need to download anything. That's ideal if you're working with a low-specced laptop or on a phone, as all the processing to make the GIF is done in the cloud rather than on your machine. With these options you can make quick and fun GIFs from YouTube videos in just a few minutes.
Use GIFs.com for great customization
Step 1: Find the YouTube video that you want to turn into a GIF (perhaps a NASA archive?) and copy its URL.

Read more