Twitter: the new home of satire
Celebrities’ connecting with their fans via social networking is not exactly news. Ever since Twitter became more widespread than peace and free love in the 60s, those that have wanted to have been able to follow every detail of their favorite star’s life.
Recently this has been distorted by certain “fake” accounts cropping up that have only gone to amuse the masses of followers and mislead even the most respected of publications around the world.
In the UK, the two accounts that have caused most controversy were set up as parodies of former soccer player Andy Townsend and currently unemployed ex –Blackburn boss Sam Allardyce.
Townsend is relatively well known in the world of soccer thanks to being the co-commentator of choice on many an ITV broadcast and the user behind @AndyDTownsend was able to easily dupe many into believing it was actually the man himself.
The sexism scandal of the past few weeks involving two of Sky’s most esteemed pundits had meant the spoof account had its say which was to be when its downfall happened.
Tweeting during commercial breaks for broadcasts on which Townsend appeared, Glen Wilson was able to dupe many. The tweets included “Steve Rider always tries to put us off when we return from the ads by singing along to that Champions League song in a high pitched voice,” and “Just received a caution for using an off-peak ticket on a peak time train. The problem with these train guards is they never played the game.”
An article in this month’s When Saturday Comes suggests that the account being closed down was the “ultimate compliment a spoof Twitter feed can hope for”.
Allardyce meanwhile also chose the account to be deleted after the amount of expletive ridden posts became too much for the former manager. Much of it was filled with vitriol, but with Twitter now being used in court cases it can’t be too long before someone is really caught out by this.
In the mean time, we’re putting the call out to those in the gaming industry to create spoof accounts of whomever they like – although Calvin Ayre might be tricky since his social media profile already far exceeds many.
Impersonating a poker player may well be a genius idea and the trick will be to see if you can actually get people to believe that you’re tweeting whilst on the circuit and an eyelid is not batted.
Although with even Manny Pacquiao having to help people distinguish between different accounts are any celebrities safe from the satirical accounts keeping everyone amused? We certainly hope they’re not safe.
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