• [from julienorvaisas] Revealing the Man Behind @MayorEmanuel [Technology - The Atlantic] – [Professor/former punk zine publisher comes clean as author of Rahm Emanuel's apparently epic fake Twitter feed. Atlantic makes a case that it represents a new kind of fiction.] @MayorEmanuel is a new genre that is native to Twitter. When you try to turn his adventures into traditional short stories or poems, they lose the crucial element of time. The episode where the mayor gets stuck in the sewer pipes of City Hall just does not work when the 15 tweets aren't spaced out over 7 hours. It's all over too fast to be satisfying. There's no suspense. This is also a piece of fiction that could interact with reality in real-time. So, when right-wing Michelle Malkin lauded @MayorEmanuel, he could tell her to eff-off. The character could be right there with you when the Bears lost, when snow blew in or as Rahm visited Google. He created fiction both out of what was happening and out of what you, yourself, were living. And he did it for five months. It was serialization in a sense, but alive.

Tags: Chicago, politics, quickies, reading, storytelling, twitter, writing

One Response to “ChittahChattah Quickies”

That’s a heck of a reframe. Identity theft is technically “fiction” in that it’s an untruth but to depict it as “entertainment” is to turn a blind eye to the harm that can be caused by deceit. At least Fake Steve Jobs was acknowledged as satire! My understanding was that this fake account was confusing to readers and troublesome for Real Rahm Emanuel because of that, which frankly seems uncool to me. Meanwhile, fake Steve Jobs (not Fake Steve Jobs) Twitter account(s) are also in the news – http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20038220-17.html

Comment by Steve Portigal 03.05.11 @ 9:35 am