Update 3/11: The fake Rick Scott account (@FLGovRickScott) has been suspended by Twitter with no reason given. Joel Kodner is currently appealing the suspension.
On January 20, new Gov. Rick Scott decided he was going to answer political questions from his Twitter account.
Thinking that was a dumb idea, one local man decided to screw it up. And that's how a fake Rick Scott Twitter account, @FLGovRickScott, was created.
The anonymous person wasn't (and still isn't) afraid to make fun of the Jewish community, women, or even local media. So of course, we wanted to know more. Click here to read more about how the fake account messed up Gov. Scott's innovative idea.
Well, that anonymous man isn't so anonymous anymore. It's Joel Kodner, a prominent asshole in the local Twitter community.
Kodner is proud of that title. Read after the jump to find out why he created the fake account and what he plans on doing with it.
The Juice: First of all why, just... why?
Kodner: There really wasn't much reasoning behind it other than when I saw he was doing a Twitter Town Hall. I tought it was hilarious for so many reasons. You can't have a political debate in 140 characters. It's just impossible, and it turned out to be the shit show everyone thought it would be.
But it's also not the first time I've done something like that. When Vaseline celebrated their 140th anniversary on Twitter I contributed to that discussion...
With the fake Rick Scott account a lot of people weren't diligent enough to check the bio. You can clearly see it's not him.
Are you this much of an asshole in person?
I don't walk around being an asshole. I use Twitter as an outlet to say things people are thinking and don't want to say. You'd be surprised how many DMs [direct messages] I get from so-called "upstanding members of the community" who say "I can't say this joke but you can."
For instance, there's this group called Social Media Club South Florida, and it's basically media experts that get together and talk about social media and other cliché crap. The night before the Twitter Town Hall, I hijacked their meetup. They have a big screen with a Twitter feed that follows their hashtag. I took the acronym and came up with my own meanings, and they basically shut down the projector.
I mean, the responses come to mind immediately, but I wouldn't always vocalize them. I won't say that kind of thing to my Publix cashier.
Why do you choose to have these accounts that personally attack certain groups of people?
It's really weird the positive response I get, which tells me people are a lot sicker than they let themselves be known to be. I don't have many heroes, but George Carlin is one of them. And if you look at his role in The Aristocrats, he says he likes "finding out where the line is drawn, deliberately crossing it, bringing
some of them with me across the line, and having them be happy that I did."
When I was messing with the South Florida media-club thing, I was getting DMs from people in the meeting who were laughing at it. I think some people just unfollow and don't bother to get in a discussion with me about it. I can't tell you the last negative comment I got.
The last negative I got with Rick Scott was someone asking me to stop spreading misinformation about Egypt. I'd prematurely tweeted about how ElBaradei wouldn't be addressing the crowd after realizing there was no four-square badge to be found. Apparently he had addressed the crowd.
Where are you hoping to take this account?
I had no plans for it outside of the Twitter Town Hall, but then I got DMs from a reporter in Orlando who wanted to know the same thing. I hadn't had any [plans], but it had gotten a positive response. When someone in the Twitter Town Hall said that "it sucks he didn't answer questions, but at least this guy was funny," I figured I'd keep it up on local level, because Florida leaves no shortage of material.
There's nothing political about it. No one is safe really.
If you got pressure from Rick Scott, would you shut it down?
I definitely think that'd just be more fodder [for the fake account]. I don't know if there's anything legal that could be done. Maybe Twitter could shut me down at his request. But if it got shut down, I would certainly continue to be offensive on my regular account because I'm not faking it there.
Update: Joel Kodner contacted The Juice to further clarify the jokes he makes on Twitter. He says he doesn't want people to think he's vindictive because that's not the case. He's a humorist and says that nothing he tweets is meant to be taken seriously.
Follow The Juice on Twitter: @TheJuiceBPB.
