I assume they meant to fly it at half-mast, but I feel that them dunking it in the gutter by mistake instead is oddly poetic.

I'm surprised I haven't seen someone else do this already.

I think what really grabbed people's attention is that he kept refusing to explain why he wanted to do that.

Whatever his reason was, it was such a stupid thing to be memeing about that I felt at home here right away. Edit: this was a while back now, during the first big migration from reddit after the API change protests.