Well, it's been only a few days but I thought I should report on the experiment so far. There has been a lot of interest and a ton of responses but I'll be upfront and say that the majority of it has been negative. There have been a few different types of negative responses.
- Those who think I'm trying to steal the CAG name or the CAG site from Cheapy. Um OK... Cheapy is a pretty clued in guy, you don't need to worry about him so much. Anyway, these kind of responses have reduced since I put up the first blog post and also I haven't received any further death threats, which puts me at ease. I have no fear of these actual threats being carried out but it does make me feel uncomfortable having random internet people wishing me dead. Also, I have some sense of guilt knowing that I've caused so much stress to someone that they have felt compelled to threaten my life.
- Those who initially thought I was actually Cheapy. I think they feel a little humiliated on realizing their mistake and need to lash out. Fortunately, these have also gone down since the first blog post.
- Those who think the tweets are not funny. Usually something like "You are not funny fuckhead. Shut the fuck up". Naturally, I totally respect the opinion, even if I'd prefer it to be phrased in a different way. Anyway, I will be continuing and hopefully more people will start to find it funny. We'll see.
- There have been a few comparing Real_CheapyD to EvilGarnett. Usually saying something like "you should be more like EvilGarnett, he's actually funny". Hey, I can't deny it, I'm an EvilGarnett follower, I enjoy their stuff. Hmmm, it's an interesting comment. I guess I'll say, firstly I am not the same person who does EvilGarnett and I'm not going to try and imitate their work. Secondly, that kind of parody just doesn't sit with my image of Cheapy. Stuff like "Today I killed a baby squirrel", "I just sexually harassed my co-worker", hey it's been funny, but as a CheapyD parody? Well, I dunno. I see Cheapy as a guy who is always finding himself in funny bizarre situations, and often making the mundane seem funny. Also, he does time to time have a sharp, witty remark to make. So, I'm trying to work the parody more along those lines than the very callous EvilGarnett character.
- There have been complaints about me spamming twitter users. Umm, I'm sorry but it seems some don't understand how twitter works. It's actually impossible for me to spam you, unless you have email notifications enabled for new followers. In that case, you'll get the single email saying you have a new follower, and nothing more. So you can either disable this feature, or make your updates protected. I know that making a twitter account protected can be inconvenient for your (future) followers, but you have to understand that your twitter feed is there for public consumption. Anyone can look at it or follow it. You can choose to block an individual twitter user from following but they can still view it if they want too. Also, I'm not "Replying" to individual users on twitter unless they solicit a reply from me. I have definitely been following a ton of users, a large cross section of the gaming community from journalists to users. This is pretty much standard practice for any non personal twitter account to get some initial interest. It is quite harmless and I'd be surprised if there are many who don't at least get a couple of spam twitter bots following them every week or so. I certainly do on my other twitter accounts.
Whew... well it hasn't all been bad. I've had some messages saying stuff like, "It's pretty funny, keep it up". And others who have realized that being impersonated on twitter can been seen as a kind of compliment to the impersonated. I do plan to continue for at least a couple of months and just see how it goes. Anyway, if a daily tweet or so from Real_CheapyD brings a smile to a Cheapy fan out there, well I'm happy.
For E3, I do plan to continue tweeting. Having said that, I'm sure the real REAL @CheapyD's tweets will be a lot more interesting so be sure to keep an eye on them.
Peace out.
p.s. yeah the names have been changed (slightly). I feel this just creates a little bit of an extra barrier between anything that may be considered offensive and real people. Also, it has helped clue in people that the account is not actually Cheapy.
