This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Carl Wimmer doesn't think much of RepWimmer, and he can tell you that in 140 characters or less.
"It's so irrelevant," Wimmer (the real one) said. "So completely irrelevant."
That was, if you're scoring at home, a 43-character smack-down of the Twitter parody account, @RepWimmer.
But the existence of @RepWimmer wasn't quite irrelevant enough for Wimmer (the real Herriman Republican running for Congress) to refrain from filing a complaint with Twitter this week. He said he asked the giant social media entity to either remove, suspend or force his cyber doppelganger to identify himself as parody on Twitter.
"There are several people on Twitter who pretend to be someone — to pretend to be that actual person — and they cause a lot of political strife," Wimmer said. "Not only is it unethical and unprincipled on their part, but it can cause some confusion. And that's unfortunate."
Parody accounts have apparently been around since the beginning of time — as evidenced by Twitter accounts for early adopters @God, @Methuselah and @Jesus. More recently, there have been parodies of @TheBillWalton, @SirDickBranson and @jasoninthepress.
That last one is a parody of Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, created while Chaffetz flirted with a run against Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Hatch has somehow avoided Twitter parody and controls both @OrrinHatch and @SenOrrinHatch.
Chaffetz said he found @jasoninthepress amusing and was surprised to hear Wimmer had filed a complaint with Twitter.
"Lighten up. It's part of being a politician in the public eye," Chaffetz said. "Embrace it. Otherwise it will consume you."
Wimmer said a caller to a local radio show asked him a question based on the fake Twitter feed and that exchange was a primary reason for making the complaint. But he did believe the @RepWimmer feed went beyond Twitter's parody policy because "they do not allow slanderous accounts and they have to state clearly they are parody."
Twitter's policy on parody accounts suggests users should not use the exact name of the person or, if there is an exact name, it should be preceded by words such as "not," "fake" or "fan."
Wimmer does not think RepWimmer's tweets are covered under the First Amendment and said Twitter guidelines "clearly state you have to show yourself to be a parody account.
"I think I was well within my rights to report the parody account."
But for now, @RepWimmer remains free to tweet things like, "They made me switch out my pink-glittered gun for this one, apparently it wasn't manly enough?"
And, apparently, @RepWimmer has since added #parody after the profile tagline, which reads, "Running for Congress...'cause I heard they pay good."
Not that Wimmer would necessarily notice. He doesn't follow @RepWimmer.
Twitter: @davemontero