In case you missed it — and it would seem that most of us did, from a cursory search — Australian hip hop duo Jackie Onassis were suspended from Twitter late last year after they used their verified account to satirically pose as the real historical figure from whom they took their name.
We know this because producer Raph Dixon (aka Raph Lauren) has now penned an enlightening and extremely entertaining account of the events that led to the pair losing their Twitter privileges — not just their coveted blue tick, but actual posting access and functional use of their account. Indeed, attempting to access it now just brings up the site's default "Account suspended" landing page.
Writing on the website of hip hop collective One Day, with whom Raph also performs, he explained that the saga really began with receiving that little badge of authenticity, as "our verification left us in an interesting and potentially unprecedented position".
"Yes, we really are Jackie Onassis, the band. But no, we really are not the woman who inspired our band name — Jackie Onassis, formerly known as Jackie Kennedy, the first wife of assassinated US president JFK," he wrote. "She passed away in 1994."
(Onassis was also Kennedy's only wife, so the "first" qualifier seems unnecessary, but we digress.)
Raph explained, as "a pretty big fan of having some good times online", when presented with the choice "to further promote the burgeoning career of my band, or represent myself as the legitimate account of the deceased former first lady of the Land of the Free", the choice was simple.
"We changed our bio from 'Sydney based hip-hop duo and members of One Day' to 'Former First Lady of the United States of America' and went pro-communism," he wrote.
Pic: Jackie Onassis/onedayers.net
With the account looking rather shmick and now spouting such thoughts such as "Abolish all private property", Raph explained that "everything was going swimmingly" until one (pretty funny) tweet — a joke comparing political echo chambers with a photo of Obama pinning a medal on Ellen DeGeneres — spread beyond previous limits and brought more (American, largely conservative) people to their page.
Pic: Jackie Onassis/onedayers.net
Aaaand pretty soon after, that's where it apparently all fell to hell.
Evidently baffled by this apparently official account for someone they knew to be long dead, cyber-snoops unearthed an off-cuff ("avant-garde", to borrow Raph's terminology) tweet — "If I had diplomatic immunity the first thing I'd probably do is shoot a cop" — and went into meltdown mode about the fact that not only was a deceased woman tweeting about killing police officers, but the account was verified.
Enter a number of confused Americans — "around 50 snitches", including Breitbart employee and self-described "Republican Leslie Knope" Ariana Rowlands — contacting Twitter with fists turned determinedly cloud-ward, and the account was ultimately suspended, probably for some breach of Twitter's rules about jokingly passing yourself off as the reanimated husk of a major historical figure.
Pic: Jackie Onassis/onedayers.net
We're honestly not sure what the likelihood of the situation getting worked out is — as we said, it's been close to a couple of months since the wave of attention that got the account canned first hit, so… not great? — but, look, at the very least, at least you can still keep up with the band and console/congratulate them on Facebook.
At least until they try it there, anyway.
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