Oh, @ElleOhHell. She’s made us laugh, she’s inspired us. When she complained about her period, we felt it and we knew she had our back. Well, turns out she is actually a he.
Popular comedy Twitter account @ElleOhHell has deleted his Twitter account after a series of tweets admitting that he was, in fact, pretending to be a woman.
“When I first started this account and was getting some notice, what I thought was a big account followed me. He DM’d me and asked if that was really me in my avatar because, as he said, ‘some of us thought you were too funny to be a girl,’” he tweeted early Saturday morning from the now-deleted account.
“The avatar is not in fact me, but my wife. She knows about it and was glad for me to have a creative outlet.”
“The anonymity was very liberating, and honestly who would want to be a man on the internet,” he continued, apparently implying that being a woman on the internet is easier.
You can read the whole thread here:
lots of folks asking for what went down with @ElleOhHell in the middle of the night. i was awake so here are the screen shots without my angry commentary. pic.twitter.com/hzIjIzln5f
— Jade Van Kley (@BacklineNurse) February 23, 2019
i can’t emphasize enough how much i thought this was gonna be “elle” outing a creepy dude account with lots of followers. we’re all used to that scenario by now. but it turns out…. she was the creepy dude account with lots of followers. pic.twitter.com/CuDvB75eRb
— Jade Van Kley (@BacklineNurse) February 23, 2019
@ElleOhHell has topped lists of “best tweets by women” time after time—a space meant for funny women on the internet to get recognition.
“‘Elle’ used a female identity to get ahead in that respect,” Twitter user @TheDreamGhoul, whose real name is Jade, told the Daily Dot via Twitter DM. She asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her privacy.
“I think this issue sparked a greater conversation about men assuming the identity of a more marginalized person to have certain allowances,” she added. “[He] most importantly, violated the trust of Elle’s female friends and gained emotional intimacy with them in a way only a woman could. Which is gross behavior.”
Jade shared a story of the first interaction she had with the account in 2015. She had just posted a tweet that started getting some traction, and “Elle” commented on it. A short time later Jade said she had a message from “her” explaining she should have “liked” “Elle”’s reply faster.
“Back then I was put off by it but kind of accepted it as a woman giving another woman advice on the unspoken ‘rules’ of that community,” she said. “But now looking back, it was a man telling a woman how to act right.”
During @ElleOhHell’s final moments on Twitter, he apologized for those he had hurt. Jade said the man behind the account got close to many in the community of female Twitter comics and they would be “personally hurt” by the news.
The Twitter-verse was shocked by the news, too.
https://twitter.com/McLeemz/status/1099418720148078592
https://twitter.com/CheesyMillenial/status/1099255942363807744
https://twitter.com/CaitMcMillion/status/1099609173959106560
summary of fuckery: elle oh hell is extremely popular Woman on Twitter, turns out it was a dude using his wife's picture (the wife is now divorcing him lmao) for FIVE YEARS, writes an 'apology' that isn't one, gets dragged, then freaks out and deletes his entire account
— live laugh furb (@bananawarmer) February 23, 2019
I have an announcement that I know will hurt many people who I admire: the person behind this account is in fact…me, a stupid man.
— Nic Sampson (@NicSampson) February 23, 2019
And while it seems like a rough time for the Twitter catfisher, who also says he and his wife (the one actually pictured in the avatar) have decided to divorce, he didn’t delete the account initially. Instead, the community called on him to do so. By Saturday afternoon, it was gone.
Update, 12:30pm CT Feb. 24: The article was updated to clarify the Daily Dot’s use of Jade’s first name only.