rferl.org; via KAB on linkedin.com
May 31, 2016
Thanks Twitter. My mornings will never be the same.
You allow despotic regimes to spread lies and propaganda. You allow trolls to disrupt our discourse. You allow bigots to spread hate and division.
But you have suspended one of the funniest, most original, and most creative parody accounts ever to grace Twitter -- one with more than 50,000 followers, one that has been making me laugh out loud several times a day for years, one that is spot on in its humor.
DarthPutinKGB pulled off an impossible task -- parodying and lampooning Vladimir Putin on a daily basis without being trite and without being abusive. His tweets were timely, relevant, insightful, and very very funny.
Suspicions are rampant that DarthPutinKGB was probably blocked due to a complaints campaign by Russian trolls.
Other parody accounts, including SovietSergei, which lampooned Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have also recently been suspended.
I wanted to collect some of DarthPutinKGB's best tweets for posterity, but since Twitter has blocked the account, I can't.
I was, however, able to find a few in my e-mail notifications.
It doesn't nearly do him justice, but here goes:
"If this report about my corruption in under the hashtag #panamapapers, I might annex Panama"
"Savchenko has been sentenced to one presidential term"
"My nightmare: Returning Ukraine's eastern border to the control of a President Savchenko"
"A 'sphere of influence' is just a polite term for a mafia clan's territory"
"As it's International Women's Day, ladies that don't reject me won't be sent to the gulag"
"Russia has cut defense spending. Attack spending remains unchanged"
"A soviet Russian counterterrorism operation kills 146% of the suspects"
"Social problems in Russia become foreign policy ones for our neighbors"
"Leonardo DiCaprio isn't good looking enough to play me"
"Don't believe anything the Kremlin doesn't first deny"
"Never believe anything is true until the Kremlin denies it"
"Oh, sure. When a KGB agent poses with a weapon, its sinister"
"Russia doesn't have an iron-clad system for whistleblowers. It has a full metal jacket' system."
"Ha! I forgot to wish my Georgian subjects a happy final independence day"
RIP DarthPutinKGB. Let's hope this is just a temporary suspension. I'll sure miss you. For now at least, social media won't be the same.
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