As soon as you read it, your cheeks flush red, your stomach turns delicately and your blood pressure rises. Thoughts cross your mind in this exact order: This is about me, isn’t it? How dare they?

A fine subtweet is like a relative you detest. You can recognise it from miles away. It does not address you at all and yet, you know when it speaks about you. If you’re either one of the two categories, the brave and the just-very-angry, you may very well land in the subtweeter’s mentions after having launched a full blown attack calling them a coward. But if you’re any other kind, you respond with a subtweet thereby sparking a war of words and stirring up widespread confusion. Tweeps who are late to the party are often left wondering what exactly happened.

Subtweeting was probably invented to stir the pot without committing to the fight. That is why many a times, subtweets that very distinctly address a certain person (but without naming them) are quickly disowned – the subtweeter is even ready to swear upon their late pet’s life that they did not mean what was inferred from their subtweet, now just a tweet. The whole of the Twitterverse was probably just mistaken. Since subtweets never directly mention the person who is being taken down, it is rather easy to twist these as meaning something mundane or even naive. This obviously is a master stroke since it can easily leave the victim looking over dramatic or hungry for attention – all very unattractive traits.

Sometimes, subtweeting is also a measure of popularity. Haters are a confirmation that you’re doing something right – if one were to go by that saying the more subtweets one begets, the more people have heard about his/her views. Unfortunately, Twitter is a place where ‘doing something right’ can be heavily and easily misconstrued. More often than not, you find people tweeting downright offensive things in the hope that they will get subtweeted at by popular Twitter accounts and become overnight sensations. The formula has a distressing success rate.

On the flip side, there are those who live under the illusion of subtweet grandeur – the assumption that people would be subtweeting at them. In reality, though, these people are so boring, they literally wish upon a subtweet to make them relevant. Yet, that subtweet never shows up. This is more tragic than a pop star accused of harassment, fake crying on a talk show.

Nevertheless, subtweets are a powerful tool for the weak, the meek and the tongue-in-cheek. Not everyone is powerful enough to simply launch an all-out attack. For those who cannot go to war, there is always subtweeting the heck out of their enemies to keep the fight alive.

The writer can be reached on Twitter at @fatmounh