Once upon a time, in a land far far away (in this case my bedroom), I created a Parody Twitter account. I'm not a man for broad strokes. I like the minutae of things. So, my subject was a fictional whisky blender, Richard Proboscis, a wafer-thin spoof of real whisky blender Richard Paterson. I got his posting style down to a tee, and recounted unlikely adventures of whisky-spilling and vociferous salesmanship. Apparently, the people at Whyte & Mackay loved it, though Mr. Paterson himself was apparently slightly dubious.
I was possibly a bit sharp, but I don't think I was ever abusive or cruel. And anyway, Mr. Paterson reduced his tweeting frequency and changed his style somewhat after a few months. I do feel slightly guilty as I wonder if I was responsible for that. I stopped posting to the account after three months, if for no other reason than it meant I ran out of material.
Which brings me to today's events. Recently, an alleged spoof accout targeting famed beer bloggers Boak & Bailey has appeared. I would post a link here, but it's likely the account will be deleted in the next few hours. To say the output has been obscure and esoteric is putting it mildly. Spurious ratings of blogs and non-sequiturs about online habits were the main topics.
But for some reason, today they have targeted the blameless Melissa Cole. I'd love to be able to say the results have been needle-sharp, coruscating satire of beer bloggery. I'd even love to be able to say it even turned the corners of my mouth up for a millisecond. But sadly no. It's been more along the lines of what the Daily Mail do to people they think their readers need to hate. An unflattering photo here, thinly-veiled abuse there. And always crying their rights in the name of freedom.
I appreciate that you get utter knobs on the Twitter as much as in the real world. But the aforementioned knobs tend to use their psedonymity to avoid the much deserved kicking they'd get in the so-called "real" world.
Freedom is a good thing, but how some people use it makes you despair
I caught the Boak and Bailey one, it didn't seem up to much. Missed the Melissa Cole one, though. They do appear ripe for parody, though. Maybe if the next one to do it did it with a bit of wit?
ReplyDeleteThe Let there be Tim Parody is quite funny, I like that one.
While there is plenty of scope for pricking the bubble of pretentiousness of some who blog and tweet about beer, this seemed to rapidly descend into offence and maliciousness and fortunately has now been suspended.
ReplyDelete