Can you imagine taking a few hours out of your day to sit down with a crayon and forge a child's exam paper? Or trying to convince thousands of people that one of your kids picked up a bra and dropped a witty quip about it being a "booby trap"? If the answer is "yes," then you might not be as weird as you think. You might just be one of the legions of "Twitter comedians" who present clearly fabricated child-related anecdotes as things that really, definitely happened, purely to pick up brownie points from strangers on the internet.My son heard the phrase "booby trap" the other day. Later, he picked up my wife's bra and said, "is *this* a booby trap?" Kind of, yeah!
— Danny Wallace (@dannywallace) January 20, 2014
RT @declanf A dad filled out a daycare questionnaire honestly for his 11 month old daughter. I like this dad. pic.twitter.com/pLFyysfSPX
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) January 9, 2014
NOT TRUE @mrnickharvey pic.twitter.com/EVJJvA39lx
— FAKE TWEETS (@FaaakeTweets) January 7, 2014
You don't have to be a moron to fall for one of these fake tweets. When seen at third or fourth hand, perhaps on a website with an editorial team, it's easy to see how the lines can get blurred. You think: That must be true, surely? Not that many people could have fallen for it. It just becomes an amusing story that you can't be forced to research, like anything published at the Sunday Sport website. There's no crime in that, but I still can't help but wonder about the people who go out of their way to create these things.@QuintinForbes just lovin' him quitting twitter because someone had the temerity to tell a grown man that his fabricated stories were lies.
— BoutrosBoutrosGully (@bain3z) January 22, 2014
"Did you hear Sharon died" "In EastEnders?" "No in Israel". Incisive topical conversations overheard in Balham Sainsbury's.
— Ed Brody (@chiefbrody1984) January 13, 2014
5yo: Dad, I really really love the Smiths. Me*wells up*: really? 5yo: .. Me .. 5yo: .. Me: you're talking about the Smurfs, aren't you.
— Tweeeeed (@Tweeeeed) December 2, 2013
Table conversation: 7 yr old daughter: next year I'll be 8. 4 yr old daughter: I'll be 5. Me: I'll be 40. 2 yr old son: I'll be Darth Vader.
— Joe Abercrombie (@LordGrimdark) January 7, 2014
I think these are some of the most heinous examples. Not just because of the horrible tone or twee vocab, or because they're faker than a Coco's butt, but because of the awful cultural shoehorning going on. Even when the parents try to pretend they know anything about their kids, they think they watch the Smurfs. What year are these people living in? The tweets are designed purely to make sense to other people on Twitter who are of the same age and demographic as the writer themselves.My 4yo just blew my mind: "The TMNT don't have secret identities. Why do they wear masks?" I GOT NO ANSWER, PEOPLE.
— Brad Gallaway (@bradgallaway) January 18, 2014
Then you've got this weird propensity for using words like "poo." Mr. Nick Harvey clearly never had this conversation. Nobody talks like that. It's basically ripped straight out of Full House. So why does he do it?Sometimes the parents go a step further, putting pen to paper and paper to scanner in order to capitalize on the inherent naivety of children. Actually going and faking a child's handwriting and signature is probably worse, and IDK, illegal perhaps? I'm not that well versed in the laws of these things, but I'm pretty sure if you did that to an adult, you'd be in trouble. Though, of course, there is the handy get-out-clause that these kids might not even exist anyway.Wife: Morning. 2 y/o: POO HEAD! Wife: I love you. 2 y/o: POO HEAD! Me: POO HEAD! 2 y/o: *starts crying* Wife: Oh, for god's sake, Nick.
— Nick Harvey (@mrnickharvey) January 7, 2014
…but the really important question is why? Why the hell do they do it? Why do they fake letters and words from their own children, like desperate kidnappers? Who thinks that's a productive use of time?Well, people do a lot of strange things for attention on the internet. They start celebrity blogs where they scrawl wild MS Paint accusations, they sell their virginities, they make squeaky-voiced video blogs, and they start Will Ferrell parody accounts.Essentially, the internet is a big room full of wankers making a lot of noise, and maybe the realities of your own life just aren't quite noisy enough to get that mass attention. When the nature of the game is standing out from the crowd, all sorts of madness and skulduggery starts to go on. Harry Styles can tweet about the things that actually happen to him and people pay attention. He can get 171,000 RTs just for saying something about eating toast in the shower. For the vast majority of us, this sadly isn't the case.At the end of the day, it's nothing to get upset about. It's nothing worth going to The Hague for. It's not the worst thing that's ever happened to the world. it's just really, really annoying. So for that, we must thank Fake Tweets, who are truly doing God's work until these kids can grow into teenagers, do a little genealogical soul-searching and confront their parents one night over dinner.When he was 7, same child: "Which station do clever cowboys listen to? Rodeo 4." Honestly.
— Charles Arthur (@charlesarthur) January 20, 2014