(David) , what is the story behind this trend in X?
03-09-2026
“Dear David” is one of the most famous viral threads ever posted on X (then Twitter). It started in August 2017 when BuzzFeed cartoonist Adam Ellis began a long series of posts claiming his New York apartment was being haunted by the ghost of a young boy named David. collider.comThe first post was blunt: Ellis said a dead child was trying to kill him. He followed it with photos of strange shadows, drawings of a pale boy with dark hollow eyes, videos of unexplained movement, and updates that grew more ominous. The thread exploded. People debated whether it was real, a hoax, performance art, or an early ARG. It racked up tens of millions of likes and retweets and stayed in the cultural conversation for years.Ellis never fully confirmed or denied it in a definitive way at the time, which kept the mystery alive. The story later inspired the 2023 horror movie Dear David. Most people now treat the original thread as fictional storytelling that used the real-time, intimate format of Twitter extremely well.That’s the “David” trend people still reference when they talk about legendary X threads. If you meant a different current David-related topic, share more details and I can dig into that one.