Since the first time Steven Colbert said the word, I've been obsessed with truthiness. That 3 minutes of satire - hell, those 3 syllables - has set the entire tone for the Colbert Report and also spoke a lot of truth about the United States in 2005, in the deepest depths of the Bush administration.
I'm going to skip the entire chapter about how sides selecting their own facts has come to dominate American culture, election cycle, blah blah blah.
While it's easy to say all the blah blah blah of truthiness is deplorable in the public square, it is totally awesome in my private life.
In fact, the fellow pictured in this post is actor Jeff Daniels. In a different context, however, the man in the picture is Will McAvoy, the character Daniels plays on The Newsroom, drawing from someone not unlike Keith Olbermann: equal parts TV blowhard and Edward R. Murrow.
Daniels is truth; McAvoy is fiction.
He has a Twitter account. To clarify: McAvoy has a Twitter account. @WillMcAvoyACN speaks with his own voice and interacts with real people on Twitter.
There are a few other "people" like him on Twitter: @JoshuaLyman, @Toby_Ziegler, @Bartlet and @sam_seaborn, to name a few.
On Twitter, this is nothing new. Inspired by Fake Steve Jobs, CEOs and celebrities have had shadow Twitter accounts that exist entirely for parody. Hence the Verified Accounts feature letting you know when a Twitter handle really belongs to the famous person in question.
But whereas the parody accounts are simply parodies, these Sorkin characters break the fourth wall in an incredible way. They're convincing. The characters behave on Twitter exactly the way you'd expect them to, based on the shows. @sam_seaborn speaks in short, pithy sentences. @JoshuaLyman yells at Donna across Twitter (OK, that one's a little cheesy). @Bartlet speaks with the authority and poise of a former president (which he would be today), with subtle biblical references sprinkled in. They humorously needle each other and they respond to real-life current events like the 2012 election debates.
None of them are Verified Twitter accounts. But you wouldn't want them to be, because it would break the illusion. Under the way Twitter runs that feature, a Verified mark would give away that the account is purposely manned by HBO or NBC. And if it's manned by a Hollywood studio, it's for promotional purposes. And if it's for promotional purposes, it's cheesy and lame because it's being written by an intern who got stuck on the social media desk because they're the youngest person there.
Yes, if you pull away the smoke and mirrors, it's almost certainly a Sorkin fan writing tweets to entertain fellow fans. But the same applies to any entertainment: The West Wing was just Martin Sheen walking around and saying things in an authoritative voice. The smoke and mirrors can always be pulled away, but sometimes we willingly go along with it.
We allow suspension of disbelief to enjoy the great stuff Sorkin writes. And now there's a compelling case to allow it in our very real Twitter feeds every day. This is big.
Jeff Daniels is truth; Will McAvoy is truthiness.