Meltwater's analysis of the 'bomboclaat' trend on Twitter in October

6 Nov 2019

Meltwater has been tracking the growing trend of 'bomboclaat' in October on Twitter across the country and the world.

You may have noticed a few terms and phrases flood your Twitter feed throughout this year. From O jewa ke eng? to Sco tu pa manaa, the rise of these phrases has taken ‘viral vocabulary’ to a new level on social media.

But now, there’s a new word roaming the Twitter streets: ‘bomboclaat’.

Meltwater's analysis of the 'bomboclaat' trend on Twitter in October

According to the Urban Dictionary, ‘bomboclaat’ is defined as a “common Jamaican expletive” used to express either extreme of excitement or sadness.

As one Twitter user pointed out though, it has nothing to do with being a greeting or asking for one’s experience, like Sco tu pa manaa does.

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Where did ‘bomboclaat’ come from?

‘Bomboclaat’ was first used as a meme by Twitter user @rudebwoy_lamz on 3 September 2019 when his tweet appeared with side-by-side images of a character from the CatDog TV series captioned ‘Bomboclaat’.

Bomboclaat pic.twitter.com/UevYs4jOQx
— L A M A R��⚡ (@rudebwoy_lamz) September 3, 2019

From there, the tweet slowly picked up in retweets and likes as a thread also began to form beneath the original tweet as users began sharing their versions of what they thought this meant.

While ‘bomboclaat’ has recently become a Twitter phenomenon, tweets that included the word already began circulating on Twitter in January this year. Around this time ‘bomboclaat’ was used by several Twitter users in Jamaica as an expression similar to a curse word.

You know what I call this? G r o w t h https://t.co/cIRCDS3KJY
— honeybun (@ShadyShadae) January 31, 2019

"shut your bomboclaat mouth" skddkdkddkd https://t.co/mXmpw5JgDw
— long jevity (@_Cooliee) January 16, 2019

A total of 265,000 tweets have included ‘bomboclaat’ this year. But October was responsible for 258,000 of those mentions, reaching 432 million Twitter users.

This is because of how memes and pictures were now added to ‘bomboclaat’, allowing for more users on Twitter to not only engage with these tweets but create their own ‘bomboclaat’ moments for others to engage with them.

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And so began the Twitter trend that is gaining traction in a similar way to Sco tu pa manaa.

Globally, France is at the top of ‘bomboclaat’ tweets, contributing 30.98% of all global mentions. The USA follows at 22.41%. Rounding up the top six countries are Nigeria (17.72%), Brazil (7.94%), Spain (4.53%) and South Africa (4.51%).

‘Bomboclaat’ is breaking borders

While just under half of all global tweets mentioning ‘bomboclaat’ were in English, two other languages were engaged with ‘bomboclaat’ – French and Portuguese, showing how regardless of where you are in the world, or what language you speak, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Or in this case, ‘bomboclaat’ is worth a thousand memes. The addition of memes and pictures to the expression has found a way to go beyond the borders of Jamaica, and have different countries share their own versions of ‘bomboclaat’

The top ‘bomboclaat’ tweet in French, with a social reach of 257,000 people, poked fun at the differences between Twitter’s night and white mode.

quand t'es habitué d'avoir le twitter en mode nuit et que ton pote te montre un tweet sur son téléphone twitter mode blanc https://t.co/5HMUrgq2ba
— ALGÉRIEN ✌ ☪ (@so_mkb) October 29, 2019

The top Portuguese tweet, asking what ‘bomboclaat’ actually meant on Twitter, had a social reach of three million.

O que significa a expressão "Bomboclaat", que está bombando nesta ilustríssima rede social chamada Twitter: https://t.co/PzEjyhBwn4 pic.twitter.com/VJxUJZREZs
— CAPRICHO (@CAPRICHO) October 17, 2019

South Africa’s own Twitter influencer, @Karabo_Mokgoko, had her ‘bomboclaat’ tweet take the top spot in the English language, with a social reach of two million people.

Send me an invoice. https://t.co/rIFFua9hNt
— Insta: Karabo.Mokgoko �� (@Karabo_Mokgoko) October 19, 2019

How South Africa has been using ‘bomboclaat’ on Twitter

Against the rest of the world, South Africans have only been mentioning ‘bomboclaat’ in their tweets 4,922 times during October. The more popular tweet, O jewa ke eng, still remains to trend as South Africans have mentioned the tweet 6,860 times.

Trending themes in South Africa related to ‘bomboclaat’ have included ‘women’ ‘Cape Town’ and former President Jacob ‘Zuma’.

These themes have emerged considering current affairs in South Africa, particularly gender-based violence.

When you're a woman in South Africa �� https://t.co/gb2IRgzjVf
— Abuti' Salvadorè �� (@ThiddoD) October 9, 2019

While ‘bomboclaat’ has taken Twitter by storm, and created a moment for users across the globe to connect over memes and pictures, South Africans haven’t particularly taken to jumping on the trend as much as the rest of the world has.

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‘Bomboclaat’ may be an expression used in humorous ways around the world, but South Africans are using it to still bring light to the social issues that South Africa faces.

‘Bomboclaat’ may not be a Sco tu pa manaa or O jewa ke eng but it certainly has dominated Twitter in October and has the potential to still do so right until the end of the year.

Insights provided by Meltwater.