The Candles Tweet (also known as "Spend Less on Candles") was a tweet made by dril on September 29, 2013. Widely considered by many to be one of dril's most memorable tweets, it currently has been retweeted roughly 59 thousand times, and favorited approximately 122 thousand times.
Raw Transcript[]
"Food $200
Data $150
Rent $800
Candles $3,600
Utility $150
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying"
Interpretation/Analysis[]
Dril wrote this tweet through the perspective of someone who has a great love of candles, to the point where they spend such an exorbitant amount of money on them while neglecting the needs of their family. For most nuclear families, a $200 a month food budget is grossly inadequate for nourishing all of the household members. Furthermore, dril's ignorance is magnified with request of budgetary assistance from "someone who is good at the economy." To create a practical and balanced home budget, one would simply need to have an understanding of basic mathematical skills as well as a knowledge of the wants and needs of their household. An economic expert like the one dril requests is quite overqualified for the needs of this situation.
Response/Aftermath[]
Response to the candles tweet was swift and nearly unanimously positive. The tweet also birthed a secondary life thanks to Twitter responder @craigus12, who suggested that dril simply "spend less on candles", an idea that dril quickly rebuked ("no"). Craigus12 warned dril that his candle fetish would lead to the demise of his family. In 2016, @pilarrianne1700 again told dril to cut back on his candle spending. After acknowledging the length of time between the original tweet and her response, dril admitted that his wife had left him and he no longer had custody of his children. However, he was still wild about candles.
At some point, a financial services blog called MomsvsDebt used the candles tweet and the "spend less on candles" response as an example about how to approach a home budget without spending money on useless trinkets. The comments section quickly erupted into users calling the blog's author Amanda Krill a moron for not noticing the inherently sarcastic and facetious style the tweet was written in and thinking that it was based on a real situation, while other commenters simply posted their favorite dril quotes. However, Amanda did acknowledge in an update of the blog post that she was aware the tweet was a joke. As of June 2017, the blog post was taken down.