Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., threatened to leave Twitter and take her 13.4 million followers with her. The congresswoman has become a major public figure, and she has come to be a target of parody.
“FYI there’s a fake account on here impersonating me and going viral. The Twitter CEO has engaged it, boosting visibility. It is releasing false policy statements and gaining spread. I am assessing with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful of what you see,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
The fact Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk replied to the parody account triggered the congresswoman. Musk tweeted a fire emoji after the parody the blue-check verified account “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Press Release (parody)” account tweeted, “This might be the wine talking but I’ve got a crush on @ElonMusk.” A tweeter replied to the tweet with a video making it seem that the congresswoman was making romantic eyes at Musk. Another tweet said, “I’m really starting to believe @elonmusk is my soulmate.”
The account ridiculed Ocasio-Cortez after she threatened to leave Twitter because of the account.
It said, “After brainstorming with my staff – I’m going to push Congress to make it illegal to joke, laugh, or make fun of me. Parody should be illegal.”
The parody AOC account tweeted “I won” after Ocasio-Cortez blocked the account. The account had 293.8 thousand followers as of Wednesday.
In other tweets, the account mocked some of Ocasio-Cortez’s political positions.
“If you could milk a cow and get fat-free, organic almond milk, I wouldn’t complain about their farts so much,” it said.
Another said, “Every time my boyfriend farts – I make him plant a tree to offset his carbon emissions.”
Back-and-forth Antagonism Between Ocasio-Cortez and Musk
Ocasio-Cortez and Musk have had an ongoing back-and-forth mutual antagonism on Twitter for months. After Musk acquired the platform in November, she mocked him for saying those who had blue checkmarks from prior to the takeover would have to pay $8 per month to keep them.
“LMAO at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that ‘free speech’ is actually an $8/mo subscription plan,” she wrote at the time. Musk replied to her saying: “Your feedback is appreciated, now pay $8.”
She slammed Musk in December after he suspended journalists who doxxed him.
“You’re a public figure. An extremely controversial and powerful one. I get feeling unsafe, but descending into abuse of power + erratically banning journalists only increases the intensity around you,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “Take a beat and lay off the proto-fascism. Maybe try putting down your phone.”
Musk riposted saying, “You first lol.”
Tweeters Ridicule AOC
Tweeters from around the world took to Twitter to make fun of what they thought was her effort to avoid ridicule.
“No, you’re fake and that account is real,” Hassan Sajwani, an Emirati poster tweeted.
A poster named Matthew Kolken took aim at Ocasio-Cortez saying she was against free speech. “You can always tell the real @aoc by the requests to censor Americans,” he said.
Others made fun of her claiming she was upset she could not censor ordinary Americans again.
“must be so annoying not having the power to get people banned on a whim anymore. poor little congresswoman,” Wired Editor-in-Chief Cassandra MacDonald tweeted.
While most tweeters ridiculed Ocasio-Cortez’ outburst, Democratic Party influencer Brian Krassenstein tweeted his agreement with her saying, “While I absolutely respect the right for people who have a parody account, this case specifically is very deceiving since the ‘parody’ wording is not seen on most devices unless the username is clicked. I agree that Musk should do something about it.”
John Rossomando was a senior analyst for Defense Policy and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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