ratio

A ratio is when replies to a social media post vastly outnumber its likes or shares, a sign that most people disagree with it. As a verb, to ratio someone means to post a reply that gets more likes than their original post.

What does ratio mean?

On X (formerly Twitter) and similar platforms, a healthy post usually gets more likes than replies. When a post gets far more replies than likes, it usually means people are piling in to criticize it. That imbalance is “the ratio,” and a post that suffers it has been “ratioed.”

Today the word is often used more directly. Someone replies to a post with a sharper take, sometimes literally writing “ratio,” and if their reply ends up with more likes than the original, they’ve ratioed it. Merriam-Webster now lists this verb sense: to give a social media post considerably more negative than positive responses.

How to use ratio

• “That brand got ratioed so hard they deleted the post.”
• “His reply has 40,000 likes and the original has 3,000. Absolute ratio.”
• “Ratio + you’re wrong + touch grass.” (a joking pile-on reply)
• “Don’t post that, you’ll get ratioed.”

Where ratio comes from

According to Know Your Meme, a Twitter user wrote in March 2017 that if a tweet’s replies outnumber its retweets by more than two to one, “you done messed up.” A few weeks later, Esquire writer Luke O’Neil’s article “How to Know If You’ve Sent a Horrible Tweet” brought the idea to a wide audience. Merriam-Webster dates the social media sense to around 2017.

Related terms

• Subtweet: posting about someone without tagging them.
• Main character: the person everyone online is talking about today.
• Rage bait: content made to provoke angry replies.
• Touch grass: go outside, log off.

See more terms like this in our internet slang dictionary.