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Friday
Sep212012

Two Fictional Twitter Greats

Published on DateFriday, September 21, 2012

Pulitzer prize winner Jennifer Egan tweeted a short story via the New Yorker earlier this year. Some heralded it as the return of serial fiction. Some pointed out that it seemed disingenuous that Jennifer Egan, a technophobe whose personal Twitter account has a total of seven tweets, was taking on the medium.

The story she tweeted was very New Yorker, and is good on its own, but it really had nothing to do with Twitter aside from the fact that it was dealt in 140 character bursts. It didn’t take advantage of the real time, impulsive nature of Twitter. The best Twitter feeds are a record of spontaneity, and I think the best fiction on Twitter looks similar.   

Twitter is the perfect realm for hyperfiction, because you really can't tell the difference between a genuine person's Twitter account and a fake one if it's done well enough. The magic is that we get to see their stories unfold as our own days roll on, getting to know the tweeted character like you might a real person.   
 

Here are two Twitter accounts that hit the mark.

@DadBoner 

At first glance, @DadBoner is just a bunch of one-liners from Karl Welzein, a divorced, middle-aged Michigan suburbanite man who loves beer, Taco Bell, and the weekend. But as you immerse yourself in his grotesquely personal tweets, he reveals details about his life, like how he’s working on a script for a remake of Patrick Swayze’s Road House (which he’s trying to get picked up by Hollywood via craigslist), or how he often gets in fights with fast food employees. He’s especially adept at carrying on a story over dozens of tweets throughout the evening:  


Karl Welzein is one of the most fleshed-out characters I’ve seen on Twitter. He’s a beautiful portrait of debauchery and ignorance that’s neither preachy nor condoning. He’s the kind of person who might be completely insufferable in real life, but when he’s filtered through Twitter, you want him as a constant companion.

 

A few more gems: 

@MayorEmanuel

Any chance Rahm Emanuel had at using Twitter during his campaign for mayor of Chicago was completely destroyed by this bat-shit insane unofficial embodiment. The now defunct parody account @MayorEmanuel covered Emanuel’s inner monologue, starting from the time of rumors of his campaign until his election a year and a half later. It chronicled a rich imagined life of Emanuel raging through the streets of Chicago with advisor David Axelrod and Carl the Intern, all while he commented on the real going-on of his run for mayor.  

The account chronicled key moments in Emanuel’s campaign, such as:

When Politico broke the story that he might be running, leaving his position at the white house.

When the Court of Appeals told him he wasn’t eligible to run.

 

Just general mayhem.


And of course, when he eventually won the election.

The tweeting ended with those words, and now the whole thing has been put in a book. It's always a bit puzzling when something that is free on the internet gets peddled between hard covers at Urban Outfitters, but this book includes context for everything he is reacting to, so it actually gives these tweets new life.  

Now go forth and populate your twitter feed with some colorful characers. Unfortunately, @MayorEmanuel is no longer tweeting, but @DadBoner only seems to be getting stronger, and his fictional ex-wife now has a Twitter as well. Let me know who brightens your Twitter feed below.

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