In the city, more than 50 people have at some point "become" the Twitter embodiment of things such as the Bay Bridge (@SFBayBridge), sea gulls at AT&T Park (@ATTSeagull), and other well-known San Francisco landmarks, buildings, streets, places, and animals. It's a fantasy world in which aspects of the city are brought to life at an intersection of psychology and technology. But across the board, the people who adopt these digital personas are serious about their secrecy. They want to erase any connection with their characters, perhaps so that others can better connect with them.
On a day in San Francisco when the fog crawls over the city, the Twitter account for @KarlTheFog will start getting tweets. Sometimes it's just comments about the fog, sometimes it's pictures and remarks about fog in other parts of the world. A ruined summer picnic is blamed simply on Karl, the name the account holder gave to the fog and the one that has stuck, creeping into the everyday language of San Franciscans. The name has grown popular enough that when Instagram instituted tagging of people in photos, a company blog post called out Karl the Fog as a "person" with an Instagram account who appears in photographs to be tagged.
The person behind the fog account, who answered questions via email and requested anonymity (to the point of not even revealing a gender), says some inspiration for what eventually became Karl came from the fake BP public relations account that sprang up after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in June 2010. "It was the first parody account I followed and thought the idea was brilliant and that I could do something like it," writes Karl's puppet-master. "I love the idea of blending fact and fiction and not knowing where one stops and the other begins." The final inspiration came after a bout of foggy weather. "Friends were whining about the most recent fogpocalypse and I was loving it. ... I've always thought of the fog as mysterious and romantic and looked forward to its arrival. Since everyone was complaining, I started thinking, 'I wish the fog had a chance to defend itself,' and that's when I created the Twitter account."
@KarlTheFog is one of the most active San Francisco "things" on social media, posting pointed commentary about the city's weather to its 17,000 followers: "Yesterday you got sunburned. Tonight you're bundled up in a hoodie. Welcome to San Francisco." and retweets comments about the fog, or lack thereof. The fog also has an Instagram account, on which it posts and reposts photos of itself.
Pamela Rutledge, the director of the Media Psychology Research Center and an adjunct faculty member at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, says the creation of Twitter accounts for things like the fog is like a type of performance art, "not much different than other types of theater, or perhaps stand-up." But the medium in which the characters are performing changes the interaction. "We don't think it's odd to find amusement in videos, comics, books, or magazines, but somehow Twitter seems different," she says. "The biggest difference is that it is interactive and allows for participation by the audience and co-creation of new content to further the story along, should the landmark, object, or dubious celebrity choose to engage at that level."
by Mike Billings, SF Weekly | Read more:
Image: uncredited
