http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tLRXjsLyn4

This reminds me of the alterna-fiction I used to publish in my high school newspaper. Basically my school was too small to have any real news, so our ‘newspaper’ was half a speculative fiction ‘zine, and my friends wrote pulpy thrillers starring our teachers and even ourselves. The chemistry teacher took down a piracy ring, the dean of students had a dungeon, a history field trip turned into a battle with a raging bouillon cube. We were a tiny school where everybody knew everybody really well, and it was inside-jokes all the way down, and yet I remember my thrill at editing those stories much better than many other things I’ve either edited or written. There was a great mixture of awkwardness and glee when I finished printing them up and put them in everyone’s boxes, a great combination of eye-rolling and chuckling as the ‘stars’ saw what adventures they were now starring in.

This is sort of the same thing on a grand scale. Social networking reworks the illusion that we are a big community and know each other well, and the newly established convention of ‘@fake _____’ gives us free reign to imagine each others’ inner superhero. It’s now so easy for us to lift the lid off our collective multiverse.

Thanks for “storifying” it, too — I don’t think I would’ve seen it otherwise. I had stopped paying attention to that Twitter feed. I thought the joke had run its course. Damn, was I wrong.

I also requested an invite for Storify. It seems like a fun tool.

People talk about new forms of fiction, new kinds of storytelling, made possible by stuff like Twitter, but this is seriously one of the best examples—maybe just THE best, no qualifier—I have yet seen. (And I mean both the @MayorEmanuel originals & your recapitulation/expansion here, Tim.)

In particular it’s the twist—the fact that this account’s been up and running, leading you on, for weeks and weeks… and then BAM it hits you with this. Brilliant. So much fun.