This Sixers fan has the tweets to prove he waited almost a decade for LeBron to join the team
A dormant X account devoted to asking "Is LeBron a 76er yet?" is back online thanks to LeBron James' announcement that he was joining the Sixers. The internet is celebrating "the greatest re-login."
An X (formerly Twitter) account that’s been around since 2017 has only ever had one question: Is LeBron James a 76er yet?
After having lost hope and gone dormant years back, the anonymous account has returned for what fans are calling “the greatest re-login” of all time.
It was a moment of redemption when @IsBronA76erYet came back online Friday. The user didn’t use words, but rather posted a popular GIF from the TV show BMF, where one of the main characters, Lamar, opens his eyes while on oxygen after waking from a coma. Millions of viewers knew exactly what they meant.
You see, not much is known about X user @IsBronA76erYet besides their fandom. X stats show the account was created in July 2017, is based in the United States, and follows only two accounts — take a wild guess who.
@IsBronA76erYet followed a format popular across Twitter accounts throughout the aughts. The “is [insert topic] XYZ yet” accounts were devoted to constantly answering a lingering question, usually in the pop culture realm, with a brief status update.
Examples include “Is Winds of Winter out yet?” an account devoted to George R.R. Martin’s sixth novel in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, @knickswintrack, which follows if the Knicks have won, or “Is GTA 6 out yet?” which has been waiting since 2019 for the latest Grand Theft Auto installment.
Over the course of @IsBronA76erYet’s life span, it would repeatedly just tweet: “No.”
There was a brief moment of hope for this devoted X user in August of 2017 when media outlets suggested James was done with the Cleveland Cavaliers. “No, but soon,” the account mused.
But in 2018, when James announced he was headed to the Los Angeles Lakers, the user took it like a dagger to the heart. “He never will be now,” the user tweeted on July 1, 2018. “Time to deactivate.” The account went quiet.
For years, fans speculated that James’ retirement from the league was imminent. Even James, the NBA’s oldest active player at 41, said there were moments he thought he was done, too.
“I was pretty sure I played my last game,” James said in a series of social media posts Friday morning. “I still truly love this game, and I have more to give.”
That’s when the figurative oxygen tank started hissing for this X user — or probably more likely, when they started fervently trying to find their old dormant account’s login information.
At 9 p.m. Friday, it was the tweet seen around the world.
Is LeBron A 76er Yet was back.
Their prophecy had been fulfilled. And the internet was there to see it.
The wordless post with the GIF has been viewed over 50 million times and has 1 million likes — more than the 400,000 or so likes for ESPN insider Shams Charania’s post breaking the news about James in the first place.
Users have been enamored with the account’s determination.
“One million likes from a non verified account who’s finally got Bron in Philly, after not tweeting for 7 years. We’ll never see this organic tweet ever again,” one user wrote. The account “rose from the ashes,” said another. “Remembering the password on an account you haven’t been able to use in eight years is worth the [likes] alone,” another remarked.
On Monday, @IsBronA76erYet posted again. This time, they wrote something they’ve never gotten to say before. One word, three letters. “Yes.”
