@Oldmansearch: Fake or Comedy Gold?

Okay, Okay, Okay, people are freaking out today over the fairly new Twitter account @oldmansearch. The account, whose user name suggest that they may be named Norman, is purportedly a series of search queries that one man’s elderly father is making, thinking that Twitter is Google.

Here’s what the Twitter bio says:

My dad is 81 years old. I’m teaching him how to use the internet. I told him twitter was how to search things on Google. These tweets are what he’s searching.

Immediately that sounds like a great idea. Old people are funny, right? I know some of you are thinking, “my lord, that’s terrible…and exploitative!”

Yes. Yes it is. But also a really funny concept.

Norman N. has apparently been busy searching “Google” since April 25th. Since then, he has tweeted/searched 42 times, ranging from topics like “waist and ankle tension” to “marion county surveyor Debra S. Jenkins pictures.”

The big question, obviously, is whether this is fake or not. Here are some of the tweets that seem unbelievable to me, either because they are too perfectly stereotypical of an old person or because they attempt to be too funny/outrageous:

The above tweets would lead me to believe that we are working with a fraudulent concept here. The next set of tweets seem like reasonably believable search queries from an 81 year old internet n00b.

The account premise itself brings ups some larger concerns. Wouldn’t the old man, regardless of his unfamiliarity with the internet, stop trying to search for things once he wasn’t given any real search results? Wouldn’t he see the Twitter bio somewhere and uncover his son’s ruse?

But alas, maybe I am missing the point in analyzing the validity of the premise. Is is not a pretty funny Twitter account either way? Most definitely funnier if it were authentic, but nevertheless entertaining even as a fake. Is it sort of a rip off of @shitmydadsays? Absolutely. But the search angle gives it something fresh.

So let’s just say it’s real then. Scrutiny be damned! Let’s all relish in one of our national pastimes – making fun of old people who don’t understand the internet.