In 2010, the latest Internet phenomenon: the Twitter fake star. Plenty of people assumed deliberately phony names — Not Kenny Chesney, Drunk Swifty, Rascal Fats, Bobblehead Brad — and used their online mask as a shield while they poked fun at the stars and the music business in general. One of the more funny favorites to Martina McBride and others like Jimmy Wayne is “Drunken Martina”.
The phony Martina typically writes short jokes or suggests she’s drunk and throwing her celebrity around in a way that’s simply not in line with what we know about the real Martina.
“I think it’s hilarious,” the real Martina McBride said during a CMA Music Festival press conference, admitting she follows Drunken Martina. Then she took a long pause before adding, “That’s all I’m gonna say.”
One of the first phonies was Not Jake Owen, who certainly got the attention of his real namesake. “I’m amused,” the actual Jake Owen admits. “I don’t know who it is — it’s not me.” Some of the Not Jake material is simply wordplay. “Knock knock,” he/she wrote recently. “Who’s there? James Otto. James Otto who? James, you Otto get a haircut.”
But a lot of the Not Jake entries are mean or crude.
“Some of it’s funny,” the real Jake says. “Some of it’s absolutely on the line.” And it puts him in a strange place. Everybody knows it’s not the real Jake writing it, and yet the other artists see, or hear about, the put-downs. And it’s weird for him to see his name attached to the comments, even if there’s a “not” in front of it. “A lot of these people,” Jake grimaces, “are my friends.”
Are any of you following these fakers on Twitter? Funny or not?
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