Punsters, not pundits

Nicholas Maronese
Editor-in-Chief
“The students united will often be retweeted!” – I had to laugh at that one.
The people behind @YFS- globalPR, aka YFS (York Federation of Students) Public Relations, are undoubtedly very witty, and their clever tweets have garnered a lot of attention within the Twitterverse. In a few short weeks, they’ve picked up hundreds of followers, and they even recently got a friendly FollowFriday follow suggestion from the York administration’s Twitter page.
The problem: YFSglobalPR isn’t run by the YFS.
As you’re probably aware, the phony account’s intent, in fact, is to satirize the local student union, and mock them every chance they get. In the vein of the infamous @BPGlobalPR, they’ve assumed the identity of their target in order to poke fun at them.
Admittedly, they’re pretty good at it.
They tweet frequently – and almost always “in character” – and employ hilarious hashtags. They make good use of photos and links, which often allow them to say a lot with very little. In short, they’re funny.
The channel also takes advantage of something their mark cannot: the anonymity of the internet.
YFSglobalPR is hard to refute because no one knows who they are – at least, no one who will publicly admit it. It’s a tactic widely employed online, and perhaps the key to YFSglobalPR’s appeal.
I also think it’s incredibly immature.
While hiding behind a user name is okay if you’re some troll waging a flame-war on a forum, it’s not appropriate for a group trying to effect real change. If what YFSglobalPR has to say is really worth saying, they’d put their names on it.
Instead, they come off as silly instead of serious, killing the credibility their arguments deserve. What could be a biting jab at our student government becomes a one-laugh one-liner – it’s as if the official opposition decided to play court jester.
While YFSglobalPR may consider their anonymity a strength, I think it’s one of their biggest weaknesses.
As long as their identity remains a secret, the only thing the channel can do is jabber and joke, and, if they’re lucky, inspire student reaction.
But they’re relegating themselves to the role of punster instead of pundit; comic instead of critic.
But, hey, maybe I’ve got YFSglobalPR all wrong. Maybe that’s their intent – to sit back and laugh instead of making a change. To titter, er, twitter about important student issues instead of really doing something.
If that’s the case, they might want to consider switching up their act; it was funny, but it’s starting to get stale real fast.