【A Thought of Ecstasy】

Proving the internet can A Thought of Ecstasybe an unpredictable wave of silliness, controversial Star Wars character Jar Jar Binks is having a big, mysterious Monday on Twitter.

The divisive Gungan began trending on Twitter Monday morning which, in turn, led to a lot of questions about whyJar Jar was trending. All those questions then caused his trending to continue and grow, thus the circle of internet life was perpetuated.

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OK, this is all very funny but it still doesn't explain whyhe began trending in the first place.

While Jar Jar has always had a dedicated fan base, the character experienced a new round of appreciation after the actor who portrayed him, Ahmed Best, shared his own struggles with depression following the backlash to his character upon his first appearance in 1999's The Phantom Menace.

So it's no surprise many worried the trending news meant the character was being killed off in a new book or comic book within the Star Wars universe.

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But, no, Jar Jar seems safe within the Star Wars canon, for now. It even inspired Star Wars author Chuck Wendig to share a nice thread that explained how an elder Jar Jar came to appear in one of his books a few years back.

It seems all Jar Jar's trending action online can be traced back to a meme, because of course.

The sleuths over at the Tampa Bay Timesdid some digging and flagged the below meme which is supposed to tell you your "Star Wars fate" based on your birth month and first letter of your last name. And the meme got a nice signal boost from Luke Skywalker himself.

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The Timesthen notes that, according to some official data from the University of Chicago, there are a whole lot of people out there with names that start with "J" which would seemingly explain why Jar Jar is trending all of a sudden.

Our unscientific survey of Twitter revealed that this explanation is as likely as any other one.

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So, there you have it. It's debatable whether or not it's more entertaining for this to have all remained one of those internet mysteries that distracted us all from the horror show that is the rest of the world in 2019.

But it's nice to know that even the most loathed characters in one of the most popular cultural creations of all time can still have a moment on the internet 20 years after his first appearance.

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