Q&A Last week the notorious Australian satirist Fake Stephen Conroy outed himself as being a senior Telstra staffer named Leslie Nassar.
ZDNet.com.au isn't allowed to interview Nassar, but he has given us permission to re-publish this question and answer session from his site, Department of Internets.
Fake Stephen Conroy
(Credit: DBCDE/ZDNet.com.au)
Why did you even start the Fake Stephen Conroy twitter page? Why did you write the commentaries?
Funny story; I didn't actually start the FSC account, someone else did. I took it over in January. That's why there's that big gap in tweets, and the writing style completely changed. It was like Bewitched; we swapped one Darrin for another.
So I'd been snarking at Web 2.0 and Slacktivism idiocy for a while on my own Twitter account, and the original Darrin thought I'd enjoy playing FSC.
Twitter is an echo chamber where pleasing voices are looped and amplified. A dissenting voice, that wanders meekly into the mix will get drowned out pretty quickly. So I aimed to be dissenting, yet populist. That worked out pretty well, actually.
It was a good opportunity to try something different, so I wrote as FSC the Buffoon, FSC the Evil Genius, FSC the Concerned Citizen. Hell, there were moments of FSC the Zen Buddhist. The whole thing, beginning to end, was a chance to flex my creative muscles just a little (some might say, very little).
Have you had previous experience as a satirist?
My creative output was always photography, never writing. Given that I've been kind of a jerk my whole life, I don't know why writing satire didn't occur to me sooner.
How do you think the Australian public and media reacted to the Fake Stephen Conroy persona?
Bewilderment, for the most part I think. As much as the Twitter Echo Chamber wants to believe it's mainstream — The new SMS! The new email! — it's really not. At least, not yet. It's the same 10,000 guys that were on Pownce last year.
Have you started other satirical efforts online to target other personalities?
No, of course not. That would be 1. Hilarious, and 2. a violation of Telstra's strict anti-impersonation code.
Why did you stop?
Because I was told to by my manager. A few of them, actually. Remember the whole TPS report thing in Office Space? It was like that, only a lot less funny, and with a complete lack of red Swingline staplers. Maybe it's an infringement of my personal liberties, maybe it's an example goonish corporate behaviour, maybe it's dumb, maybe I'm a coward; but the bottom line is that (for now) the humourless-ones pay the bills. And baby, I gots to get paid.
Okay, but why did you out yourself?
Because I was about to be outed, whether I liked it or not.
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"My creative output was always photography, never writing. Given that I've been kind of a jerk my whole life, I don't know why writing satire didn't occur to me sooner."
Well he got that right, cos he certainly is a dead set jerk.