04 December, 2013

Why Elan Gale Made Up an Epic 'Note War' on a Thanksgiving Flight - ABC News

Why Elan Gale Made Up an Epic 'Note War' on a Thanksgiving Flight - ABC News:
When did you realize that it had gone viral?
I didn't realize it had gone viral until late that night [Thursday]. Once I woke up the next morning on Friday and realized people were reporting this as news, I thought it was the craziest thing I had ever seen.
Anyone who would scroll back [through my tweets] would see what I am all about as a tweeter. My thought was I can't believe anyone is taking this seriously. I thought "Why isn't anyone doing any fact checking?" Then I saw it was on the evening news in Sacramento and it became this totally absurd thing.

Why didn't you reveal that it was a fictional story then?
I didn't see how this was news. I was telling a story, I didn't feel a particular responsibility to address what other people were making of it. I never claimed it to be true. I never said, "this is news, please read it." And I honestly I liked the message.
I wasn't trying to paint myself as a hero. I said horrible things in those notes that I would never say to a human being. That nobody would ever say. In fact, in all of my live tweets, I try and portray my character as an anti-hero -- as kind of a jerk with good intentions.