The week of April Fool's Day was a bit existentially dispiriting around here. The warning went out for April 1: Remember, a lot of what the internet will be getting excited about today is fake bullshit being spread in bad faith purely for the sake of getting people excited.
Four months ago, New Yorker writer Susan Orlean revealed that a Buzzfeed creative strategist named Jacob Bakkila was behind the popular "spam" Twitter account @Horse_ebooks. Today, her article has been published (subscription-only); this is Orlean on "Weird Twitter":
Jake Bakkila, the artist who revealed himself as the real human behind the widely-beloved "spam" account @Horse_ebooks earlier this week, only to be confronted with accusations that he had manipulated and misled a journalist—to the point of "gaslighting"—who had uncovered a component of his project, says that "[t]he…
As though the saga of the internet's weirdest hoax wasn't weird enough already: A journalist nows claims she found out the art-pranksters behind YouTube series Pronunciation Book and the fake Twitter spambot Horse_ebooks—only to be lied to, manipulated, and "gaslit" for months by the two men and a circle of mutual…
We are a religious nation, even though that religious belief is rapidly fading and notoriously shallow. What we hunger for is real communion with the sacred, the unexpected voice of a mysterious god that occasionally speaks directly to our consciousness, as the old gods spoke to Moses and Mohammad or Achilles and…
Since 2011, the semi-legendary spam Twitter feed "@Horse_ebooks" has been under control of Jacob Bakkila, a Buzzfeed creative strategist who used to tweet under the handle "@agentlebrees."
Last year, high school senior Emily wrote on her Tumblr blog, "if this [post] gets above 500 notes i'll use a horse_ebooks tweet as my senior quote."
When I tracked down Alexey Kuznetsov, the reclusive Russian web designer behind the cult favorite Twitter spambot Horse_ebooks, he wouldn't comment on his strange creation, refusing even to speak to me for the article in February. But now he's finally laid claim to Horse_ebooks, in a roundabout way.
Horse_ebooks became a bona fide internet celebrity when organizers of ROFLCON, the premier conference on internet pop culture, asked in January: "Anyone know how we might be able to get in touch with @horse_ebooks?" Horse_ebooks has 40,000 Twitter followers and a wildly passionate fanbase, but you're unlikely to see…
