Shortly after 10 p.m. Eastern last night, Clint Eastwood took the stage at the Republican National Convention and began arguing with an empty chair meant to represent President Obama. Moments later, an enterprising Twitter user created a novelty account based on the incident: @ClintsChair. That handle didn’t really catch on — but rival account @InvisibleObama did. When I retweeted the account’s first message around 10:21, it had fewer than 100 followers. An hour later, it had amassed tens of thousands — by 10 a.m. this morning, the count was up to 40,000. See, transparency works!
Sometime after 9 a.m. today, Invisible Obama was temporarily suspended; we’re working on finding out why. (It reappeared around 9:40 a.m. with this message: “I’m back. Sorry about that. @Twitter took the invisible thing a little too literally. Now where were we…”) Thankfully, retweets and screenshots mean that this masterpiece’s best jokes were never truly lost. Here are some of my favorites:
