#UnfollowMcCain born when Sen. McCain asked Twitter for more followers

It started, like many things these days, with a tweet. Sen. John McCain wanted a few more followers. 

"We're only 74 Twitter followers away from 3M," @SenJohnMcCain wrote Monday morning. "Spread the word and help us reach this big milestone!" 

Word did spread. But the internet, ever punishing, refused to let McCain have his big milestone. The senator's request went live at 11:27 a.m., when his verified account had 2,999,926 followers, or 74 away from 3 million.  

Then the number started to fall, pushed away from McCain's milestone by people professing anger with the senator's tax-reform vote. A new form of protest was born: #UnfollowMcCain appeared on Twitter. 

"Unfollowing NOW!" replied Scott Dworkin, tweeting from @funder.

"Unfollowed... should have reconsidered that tax scam vote," wrote @staygold8512.

"John, earn your followers the real way," posted @gettinnoticedmo, "by tweeting meaningful things." 

By 2:43 p.m., Arizona's senior senator had lost almost 12,000 followers, with more accounts fleeing every few seconds. 

McCain's "Ratio," a meme-friendly measure of good and bad tweets, was worse: McCain's plea drew more than 10,000 replies and just over 700 retweets. 

"A brief perusal of his timeline indicates that John McCain might be the official senator of The Ratio," wrote @sbhudson108. 

More than three hours after McCain's tweet, his follower count was still falling. But it appeared somebody was trying to stem the flow.

His account picked up a rush of new followers. Almost half of them appear to be fake.

TALKING POLITICS: Listen to our Arizona politics podcast, The Gaggle, on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Stitcher or Google Play.

READ MORE:

Sky Harbor Airport Terminal 3 may be named for Sen. John McCain

Focus on Sen. Jeff Flake after Sen. John McCain says he will back GOP tax cuts

Sen. John McCain's tweet clears up boot confusion: It's on his left leg