Name jokes in vogue

"Syria. The name itself sounded sinister, like syringe, or hiss."

This sentence started arguably the best humour meme on Twitter: #CountriesByVogueWriters.

Items tagged often enough with the # symbol become trending topics on the social network.

Sometimes they bring out the best epigrammatic humour from the 140-character medium.

The story that launched 1000 tweets was about a blindly complimentary article in Vogue about Syria's first lady, Asma al-Assad.

Written in December 2010 as the Arab Spring was just beginning - and focusing not on the human rights abuses of husband Bashar al-Assad's regime - it was puff-pastry journalism at its worst.

Joan Juliet Buck, who wrote the article for Vogue that appeared in March last year, this week wrote a scathing response for Newsweek about what the Washington Post called "the worst-timed and most tin-eared, magazine article in decades".

Vogue pulled the article from its website, but it is still online on what appears to be the personal website of the Syrian dictator.

As soon as Buck's Newsweek article appeared, her phrase "the name itself sounded sinister" took off on Twitter. The humour has been superb. "Azerbaijan - the very name sounded accidental ... like the cat walked across the keyboard," tweeted one person.

"Greece. The name itself sounded slimy, unhealthy. Luckily, Germany was proposing a makeover," wrote another.

The Vogue-directed sarcasm has been, in the words of another spoof advertising meme, priceless: "Czech Republic. The name itself sounded like what I should have done before writing that Vogue article."

"Spain. The name itself sounds like its rulers are causing so much pain, it needs Vogue to provide some spin."

This year has seen some brilliant humour on social media.

"Texts from Hillary", a witty Tumblr account (textsfromhillary clinton.tumblr.com), featured a photograph of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton texting on a plane while wearing sunglasses.

In the first of the series, US President Barack Obama is seen texting, with a caption asking: "Watcha doing?"

The now famous Clinton plane picture (above) shows her presumably replying: "Running the world". The Tumblr, to which Clinton responded with humour by inviting its creators to a meeting, landed one of them, Stacy Lambe, a job with BuzzFeed.

This Tumblr has cleverly captured some of the internet's zeitgeist, including dissatisfaction over the Facebook listing.

In another spoof, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (known for wearing T-shirts and hoodies) is seen texting with the caption, "Guess what I just bought?"

The Tumblr Clinton replies: "A shirt with a big-boy collar?"