Correction: We quoted the NYT as saying the @BPGlobalPR account had more than 150,000 followers. “Leroy Stick” contacted us and says that this is incorrect. The account never had that many followers, “but I predict we will be the end of the day,” Stick says.
In response to a request from Twitter and BP to clarify that it is, in fact, a parody, the Twitter account @BPGlobalPR altered its bio this week. Luckily, the fix only added to the hilarity of the profile.
According to The New York Times, Twitter contacted @BPGlobalPR on Tuesday to remedy the identity issue (@BPGlobalPR is a parody account created by an anonymous user in response to the massive oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico). The twitterer in question poses as a clueless BP PR person, offering scathing commentary about the manner in which the spill has been dealt with. And, it seems, this week BP had had enough with the charade.
“BP requested that the account holder be asked to comply with Twitter’s guidelines regarding parody,” read a statement from Twitter issued today. “Twitter subsequently provided suggestions of best practices that are found on our parody policy page.”
Before today, the bio expressed the account’s wish to “get BP’s message and mission statement out into the twitterverse!” Now, it reads: “We are not associated with Beyond Petroleum, the company that has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico for 51 days.”
Prior to the change, the account holder — who used to purport to be a BP PR man named “Terry” and now goes by “Leroy Stick” — kept up the act, tweeting in confusion:
We’re not sure what effect this fix will have on the account’s fanbase, which has more than doubled since we interviewed the creator via e-mail a few weeks ago. We’re guessing that most people already knew that the account was a spoof, but the NYT reported at 1:37 p.m. that the account had “more than 150,000 followers,” and now it has 144,904 — so maybe some people were confused.
What do you think of the switch, and the concept of parody accounts in general? Have you ever been fooled by a handle such as @BPGlobalPR?
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Tags: humor, pop culture, social media, twitter