'Ended Cardi': Why Does Twitter Name-Drop Rappers Out of the Blue?
Oh the mysterious world of Twitter comments.
"Notice how Cardi wasn't invited", reads one of the comments on Twitter in a thread under the news about 'Stranger Things '. "Ended Nicki", another one declares in the middle of a discussion of a new trailer for some kind of an HBO Max show. If you too have seen such comments and understood nothing about how Cardi B or Nicki Minaj are related to any of the news such comments appear under, we relate.
Social media culture can be pretty difficult to follow even for Gen Z Twitter savvies and TikTok influencers. Some things, however, seem to last surprisingly long – and this seems to be the perfect example of such longevity.
While it's unclear why exactly people would still "end" Cardi, Nicki or any other celebrity they can think of in random Twitter comments, the roots of this might date back to 2018.
At the time, Cardi B and Nicki Minaj were engaged in a heated beef: in September of that year, according to reports, Cardi became upset after Minaj blasted her skills as a mother and lashed out at Nicki on the sidelines of New York Fashion Week. Shoes were even thrown; at that point, the feud between the rappers bled into the social media as well.
The skirmish was quickly turned into memes, and since then, little punchlines between the fans of the two has become some sort of a tradition. Now, comments about them appear under multiple completely unrelated posts. Sometimes, the "ended" rhetoric would include other celebrities: Taylor Swift or Doja Cat, for instance. Just because.
Today, the relationship between Cardi and Nicki remains vague; some fans believe that their 2018 row was carefully orchestrated purely for PR. Others recall the most recent incident between the two: in July, Nicki Minaj seemingly suggested that Cardi was racist in an Instagram post, only to delete it later.
Whatever these two might be going through, be it a secret friendship or open rivalry, it doesn't seem the rappers will disappear from random Twitter comments any time soon — they are no longer just comments, they are memes.