Earlier today the Republican National Committee purchased the trending topic (or hashtag) #areyoubetteroff. Asking the question "are you better off?" than you were four years ago is the RNC's first use of Twitter as an impromptu (and very unscientific way to poll the populace). It also appears to be the first time the RNC has purchased a trending topic, just days after the Romney campaign became the first official political campaign to do the same when it purchased #RomneyRyan2012 during Romney's speech last Thursday night.

There have been more than 31,000 hashtag responses according to the New York Times, which has collected a smattering of some of the more contrarian replies to the question. Twitter has become a given in this election cycle, and it reported at the end of the convention that the event had generated more than 4 million Tweets, crushing the 2008 cycle's less-than-300,000 Tweets on election night.