In a scene from “Saturday Night Live,” the English actor Daniel Craig stares into the camera and flops his arms half-heartedly as if he meant to raise them above his head but got tired halfway. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Weeknd,” he says, announcing the episode’s musical guest: the Canadian pop star Abel Tesfaye. The studio audience begins to cheer. These four seconds of footage, notable if only for Mr. Craig’s ambiguous tone (was he exasperated? dubious? expectant? neutral?), were surely forgotten by most viewers after the episode was broadcast on March 7, 2020. But not by Miles Riehle.
Watching Mr. Craig on “S.N.L.,” he was amused by what he saw as a double entendre. “It sounds like he’s welcoming in the weekend, as in Saturday or Sunday,” said Mr. Riehle, 18. “I was like, ‘Man, that’s funny.’” Following in the footsteps of Twitter accounts that tweet only on specific dates — think “Mean Girls” and October 3 — Mr. Riehle claimed the handle @CraigWeekend and started tweeting the clip every Friday afternoon. When the account took off months later, in November, “I was excited to have so many people following something that I was doing,” Mr. Riehle said. Soon, interview requests started rolling in.
The extra attention, while thrilling, was also daunting, he said, “because now I have to make sure I keep all these people entertained.” That said, he seems to be sustaining the interest of his more than 450,000 followers, who, Friday after Friday, await his announcement that the workweek has come to an end. Mr. Riehle thinks the account’s appeal can be chalked up to its positive and predictable messages during a period of fear and uncertainty. Some people message him when they feel he has not delivered his proclamation early enough.
“Given how much stress there was going on in the world, for a lot of people, it was extra potent, being able to embrace the weekend and get excited about it,” he said. Fans of the account, he said, have developed “a community of good vibes.” “It always seems like people are nice to each other in the replies, comments, and quote-tweets,” Mr. Riehle said. “I think that’s sort of rare on the internet.” He usually posts between 3:45 p.m. and 4:20 p.m. Pacific time, but never on the hour. “I kind of want to keep people on their toes,” he said.
Josh Varela, a fellow at Lead for America, a local government leadership program for recent college graduates from Ventura, Calif., have notifications turned on for the account so he and his roommate know it’s time to put aside their responsibilities for the week. Indeed, his followers know something is coming — but not precisely when — which could be vital in keeping them engaged, said John Suler, a psychology professor at Rider University. The predictability “is very reassuring to people, especially during a pandemic when people have little else to do on a Friday, and everything else in life seems so unpredictable,” Dr. Suler said. “But then, he does mix in a bit of unpredictable reinforcement by posting at different times of the night.”
“Whenever @CraigWeekend tweets, we see it as the time we’ll crack open a beer and hang out,” Mr. Varela, 23, said. Derek Milton, a 34-year-old film director from Los Angeles, said, “any anxieties, worries, any hardships that have accumulated over the past five days are relieved by a four-second clip.” He and his friends love the video so much that they recorded a parody version of their own while setting up a photoshoot with none other than The Weeknd. Mr. Craig could not comment on the “S.N.L.” clip, but the Weeknd appears to be in on the joke. In May, he tweeted, “Ladies and gentlemen, the ….”
It wasn’t hard for Mr. Riehle to fill in the blank. “I consider that a call-out tweet to me personally,” he said. “I think he likes it.” Mr. Riehle starts college this fall at the University of California, Davis, where he plans to study environmental policy and planning. He intends to keep running the account while in school. “I don’t know when it will end or if it will end,” he said. “If it gets to a point where it’s harming my relationship with the internet, then I might get rid of it, but I have no plans right now ever to stop doing it.” For all the relief his account gives the weekday 9-to-5 crowd, Mr. Riehle knows that, for some workers, the tweet could also be a dispiriting reminder of impending duties. On the weekend, he works as an ambassador for Orange County’s public transit service. “It is kind of ironic,” he said.
