Rise of the LOLBolts

Andrew Bolt is perhaps better known in Melbourne than he is in Sydney, but the thing about the internet is that it is the great equaliser: as such, we can read his venomous and under-inflated opinion pieces wherever we are in the world.

Bolt is a target ripe for parody, and as such a twitter account purporting to be written by the man himself appeared online. It was not until nearly 18 months into @AndrewBolt’s Twitter reign that the “real” Bolt acknowledged the fake’s existence.

The Fake Bolt responded to the real Bolt’s outrage through Crikey with the arch headline “Real Andrew Bolt is wrong, says Fake Andrew Bolt”. With one of the subjects of the article also being the writer of the article, there is a clear bias displayed, but this is irrelevant.

Fake Andrew Bolt is writing in a different register to his normal satirical mode; here he is explaining himself while simultaneously painting a negative picture of the real Andrew Bolt and his apparent lack of humour. The article works because of the place of its publication: Crikey balances serious reportage and tongue-in-cheek humour on a daily basis.

Fake Andrew Bolt isn’t as high profile as fake pundits along the lines of Stephen Colbert, but he operates to the same principle: that of “Poe’s Law”, which states that fundamentalism and conservatism are largely indistinguishable from satire and parody. (For a decidedly different reading of Poe’s Law, check the always confusing Conservapedia)

In Australian media and political discourse, Twitter is becoming an increasingly pervasive and influential tool. Real Bolt can try to dismiss Twitter, saying, “I don’t really need to tell people what I had for breakfast”, but it is difficult to deny the impact that Twitter has had on a media savvy subset of Australian citizens. That some people can’t tell the two Bolts apart really says all that needs saying.