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A tweet from Australia.

June 27, 2017

Ben Ward, an Australian cartoonist who tweets absurdist gags from the handle @pixelatedboat, posted the above joke on June 12, 2016.

Last week, a little more than a year later, Oxford Dictionaries said in a blog post that its editors were keeping a close eye on the term, a hint that the phrase could join other modern constructions such as “drunk texts” and “squad goals,” which Oxford recognized this year. References to Milkshake Duck had shot up in the last month, Oxford said in its post, which also noted that an Urban Dictionary entry had been recently created, a sure sign that something may be catching fire on the internet.

Over the last year, the Milkshake Duck tweet came to capture an ever-more-frequent phenomenon: the way that an online joke can blossom until it obtains a semi-permanent position in the expanding and occasionally bizarre world of internet slang.

“I thought the tweet was a pretty good joke summing up a recent trend,” Mr. Ward said in an email. “I liked it more than my usual tweets. But I didn’t think, like, ‘Yes! This will be a meme!’”

So, what’s a Milkshake Duck?

It’s a real-life illustration of Mr. Ward’s tweet.

We’ve seen it happen many times: Some seemingly delightful noncelebrity diverts the internet’s attention from the more troubling news of the day. But before the civilian can enjoy the proverbial 15 minutes of fame, a dark or divisive facet from his past is discovered, promptly destroying the purity of the person’s reputation. It’s why we can’t have nice things.

Look no further than Ken Bone, whose bright red sweater and steady questioning of the candidates in an October presidential debate made him an instant celebrity. Days later, Mr. Bone was undone, as some unsavory comments from his Reddit history online came to light.

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