A verified Twitter account mocking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has skyrocketed in followers and engagement in the past two days, with some help from Elon Musk. Twitter appeared to reinstate the once-banned account in May, and Musk soon interacted with it and increased her following.
Twitter has promoted the parody account in other ways as well, including ranking first in search results for «AOC,» above Ocasio-Cortez’s official account.
On Tuesday, the account garnered significant attention on the platform after the real Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “FYI here is a fake account impersonating me going viral. The CEO of Twitter has compromised it, increasing visibility. He is posting false policy statements and gaining airplay. I am evaluating with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful what you see.»
Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., appeared to be referencing @AOCPress, which is marked as a parody account but appears almost identical to the congresswoman’s real account when users scroll through their feeds. Parody accounts are required to mark themselves as impersonators on their profiles, but that mark is cut off when viewing tweets from the @AOCPress account in mobile app feeds.
The account is misleading some of the people reading its tweets, bringing to life some of the fears about Musk’s paid verification system stripping legacy verified users of their blue checkmarks. In the responses, there is a mix of responses from people taking the tweets at face value and attributing them to the real Ocasio-Cortez, while others pointing out that it is a parody account.
The most viral tweet on the account plays into a sexist trope that Musk and other conservatives have embraced since his acquisition of Twitter, that Ocasio-Cortez has a secret crush on him.
“This might be the wine talking but I’m in love with @elonmusk,” the parody account tweeted on May 28. The next day, Musk responded with a fire emoji. The tweet has been viewed more than 26 million times, according to Twitter metrics, and has more than 60,000 likes.
Among other viral tweets that Ocasio-Cortez may have been referencing was one that promised $3 billion in reparations to the transgender community and another that suggested sending 10 million Americans to Ukraine.
The parody account has actually been around since November 2018, but the following year, under the leadership of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, it was permanently suspended for its «misleading» parody content. When Musk took over the company in 2022, the account was reinstated, and some of the new policies seem to amplify it.
According social bladeAccording to a social media analytics tracker, Ocasio-Cortez’s parody account had 85,000 followers as of May 2019, the month she was suspended for impersonating the congresswoman.
After the account’s restoration in May 2023, he immediately lost more than 16,000 followers. The account then skyrocketed to over 80,000 followers again on May 29, after Musk responded to it. On May 30, the day Ocasio-Cortez responded to the account, she gained more than 100,000 followers. It has continued to climb, reaching over 292,000 followers as of posting.
The @AOCPress account was first created by Michael Morrison, whose Twitter profile identifies him as a member of the New York Young Republicans Club. In May 2019, Morrison’s personal account and parody account were permanently suspended.
Morrison posted about the suspensions on his account on the conservative social media platform Gab, where he also posted from a parody of Ocasio-Cortez’s official account between April 2019 and July 2019. The posts shared on Gab were more sexually explicit and the account shared posts from other users that contained racist slurs.
In November 2022, Morrison tweeted about restoring his personal account under Musk’s new leadership. The @AOCPress account was not restored until May 2023.
Reached for comment via Twitter direct messages, Morrison told NBC News that he no longer manages the @AOCPress account and is run by what he believes is «a team of people.» The parody account did not respond to a request for comment.
Another popular conservative tweeter, «@catturd2», has seized on the rumors that he is behind the account, tweeting «Can’t confirm or deny but hey you might want to follow me» on May 22, the day it was opened. the check. restored