(BBC) If one measure of success is popularity on social media, the vice-presidential debate was a no-contest.
Despite the candidates’ best efforts, nothing they said resonated with people online quite like the wanderings of one unsuspecting insect.
For approximately two minutes, a fly landed on Vice-President Mike Pence’s head and became an instant internet celebrity.
The phrase “the fly” has been tweeted and retweeted more than 700,000 times since it appeared during the debate.
The Joe Biden campaign has taken full advantage of this, registering the domain “flywillvote.com”, while a picture of the candidate holding a fly swatter has been liked more than 500,000 times at the time of writing.
But it was not all jokes, as conservative commentator Ben Shapiro suggested the fly was a way to distract from what happened during the debate.
