When Bret Easton Ellis Tweeted His Drug Order Publicly

At 5:13 AM on December 3, 2012, American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis sent what would become one of the most infamous tweets in literary history. The message was simple, cryptic, and grammatically mangled: "come over at do bring coke now."

The problem? He'd just broadcast it to his 350,000 Twitter followers instead of privately texting his dealer.

The Tweet Heard Round the Internet

Ellis later admitted he was "a stupid clown who would order cocaine drunk on his iPhone." The early morning timing and garbled syntax suggest he was half-asleep, not paying attention to whether he was in his text messages or his Twitter app. One misclick, and his private vice became very public entertainment.

The beauty of the tweet lies in its ambiguity. Was it cocaine? Coca-Cola? Ellis never explicitly confirmed, leaving just enough plausible deniability while the internet collectively knew exactly what he meant. The awkward phrasing—"come over at do bring"—made it even more authentic, the kind of autocorrect-mangled message you fire off when you're not quite sober.

A Permanent Part of Internet History

Unlike most celebrities who scramble to delete embarrassing tweets, Ellis left it up. The tweet remains on his account to this day, a monument to social media carelessness. It became such a cultural artifact that in April 2021, during the NFT craze, Ellis put the tweet up for auction as a digital collectible.

The incident perfectly encapsulates Ellis's brand: provocative, self-aware, and unapologetically messy. For the author who wrote Patrick Bateman's cocaine-fueled confessions in American Psycho, accidentally live-tweeting a drug order felt almost too on-brand. Some critics suggested it was performance art, Ellis "working through his greatest hits back-catalogue" by embodying his own literary themes in real-time.

The Lesson Nobody Learned

Ellis's blunder predated the era of Instagram Stories disappearing after 24 hours or encrypted messaging apps. In 2012, Twitter was still the Wild West—celebrities, politicians, and authors all learning the hard way that the internet never forgets.

The phrase "come over at do bring coke now" has since been immortalized in articles, memes, and discussions about Literary Twitter's most memorable moments. It's a reminder that even acclaimed novelists aren't immune to the universal experience of sending a message to the wrong person—except when you're Bret Easton Ellis, that "wrong person" is several hundred thousand people watching in real-time.