There was chaos yesterday, when Roger Mills, a real estate broker in New Hampshire, tried to send a tweet that was a retweet of a reply to a direct message of an @ reply, causing the universe to cave in on itself.

The universe collapsed and twisted in the middle, a little like a sausage balloon, causing Twitter’s servers to melt down from an influx of reverse direct messages with @ in them.

Fortunately the problem was somehow rectified when Facebook picked up the tweet in Mills’ account and broadcast it as a plain text status update.

Twitter users are warned against using paradox inducing tweet chains in future.