Clint Eastwood’s bizarre performance at the Republican National Convention Thursday night—in which he addressed an empty seat representing the President—has already spawned @InvisibleObama, a hugely popular parody account that gained 40,000 followers in less than 12 hours.
Who’s behind @InvisibleObama? We still don’t know. But we did have a sit down with him (or her) via Twitter.
“Not revealing identity yet,” the anonymous user told the Daily Dot. “But I can tell you that I’m in NYC. And I’m not actually invisible.”
Shortly after Eastwood’s spectacle, @InvisibleObama kicked off its Twitter feed with a simple “… ,” echoing the response that most Americans heard the chair give to Eastwood. The tweet received over 4,000 retweets. As the night wore on and its follower base steadily grew, the chair became chatty.
“The GOP built me” it tweeted, echoing the RNC’s overall theme.
“Cilnt Eastwood’s performance opposite an invisible man was the best since Daryl Hannah’s. I should know. I had a front row seat,” a later tweet quipped. The “Memoirs of an Invisible Man” references continued with a Friday morning #FF suggestion: “#FF @casper @chevychase @elijah @toothfairy @kevinbacon”
Upon a temporary suspension of the account early on Aug. 31, @InvisibleObama’s returned with “I’m back. Sorry about that. @Twitter took the invisible thing a little too literally. Now where were we…”
Building a Twitter fandom from scratch is nothing new to the person behind @InvisibleObama.
“This is not the first [parody account], but certainly the one with the most traction,” he said.
Due to that traction, the ghost tweeter is interested in doing a Reddit AMA in regards to his account. He added an email address to his profile specifically so redditors could ask.
“I’ve had 3 formal (well-written) requests for the AMA,” he said. “If I do it, I promise to not use canned or vetted responses.”
That AMA hasn’t happened yet, but we still had one question—does @InvisibleObama itself feel that the United States is ready for an Eastwood/Chair administration in the White House?
“I’m not sure if that ticket would be bi-partisan, or bi-crazy. But if we were together, it would be a Chair/Eastwood administration, let’s be clear. Well, at least one of us would be. The other one may not even be lucid.”
Photo via miheco/Flickr