AlDub Featured on Morning News USA

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The hashtag #ALDUB, which people all over the world are seeing over and over again as the top trending topic on Twitter, pertains to a Filipino onscreen couple, reel lovers, Maine Mendoza and Alden Richards. The two are now considered a power couple that has achieved a global phenomenon.

The hashtag was born out of combining Richards’ first name Alden and Mendoza’s screen name, Yaya Dub, which she used in Philippine noontime show “Eat Bulaga.” Their onscreen chemistry can be compared to that of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” Except that Mendoza and Richards are yet to have a movie. What they have is a mini-TV series shown everyday during lunch hour in the Philippines.

Nevertheless, the onscreen couple was already dubbed as a global phenomenon by Twitter Asia Pacific and Middle East Vice President, Rishi Jaitly. According to a report from Rappler, the reel sweethearts garnered a record 26 million tweets on Sept. 26 with the hashtag #AlDubEBforLove. In an interview with Rappler, Jaitly noted that this was just short of a couple of million tweets to break the record global tweets for Super Bowl XLIX in February 2015.

Jaitly said that the recorded tweets for the couple in September had surpassed the tweets about the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards – this was despite the mini-TV series starring Mendoza and Richards being a 30-minute segment, and in spite of Miley Cyrus hosting the MTV awards. Not to mention that Kanye West also announced he was running for president in 2020 during the recently held MTV.

Jaitly told Rappler that Twitter had initially doubted the authenticity of the tweets pertaining to ALDUB but they found out that they were wrong. “This is such a global phenomenon, as I said, that we had to look internally to make sure that these tweet volumes were in fact authentic. But this is real, this is not a sideshow, this is real media being creative,” Jaitly told Rappler.

In a separate report from Rappler, Broadway artist and international celebrity Lea Salonga came under fire when she tweeted something that was misunderstood by fans as criticism of the power couple. According to a report from BITBAG, rapper Dawin thanked the power couple for using his song “Dessert” in their miniseries. The international band Lifehouse also invited Mendoza and Richards to watch their concert. Broadway producer Shea Arendar also expressed desire to cast the two for his new comedy musical.