Edith Frost, the Texan singer-songwriter and Drag City luminary, has been banned from Twitter after changing her username to “Elon Musk” and tweeting a series of absurd jokes, as Galaxie 500’s Damon Krukowski points out. In a series of now-inaccessible tweets, Frost tweeted satirical and scatological gags like, “Ow ow ow ow owwwwww!!! (my poop chute),” and, “Twitter is the greatest social network on earth! For me to poop on.” She had changed her profile picture to a photo of Elon Musk scribbled over with an unhappy face.
On November 11, four days before Frost’s tweets, Musk had vowed to crack down on unlabeled parody accounts. “Going forward, accounts engaged in parody must include ‘parody’ in their name, not just in bio,” he tweeted. The multi-billionaire and Tesla CEO, who touts himself as a free-speech champion, had fallen victim to a meme in which scores of Twitter users, some of them verified, impersonated Musk himself.
Beforehand, Twitter had implemented rules against impersonation intended to “mislead, confuse, or deceive others,” but would issue a warning before bans. On November 6, however, Musk removed the pre-ban protocol, saying that his Twitter Blue rollout, which verifies anybody who pays a subscription fee, necessitated tighter policy enforcement. “This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue,” Musk tweeted. Frost was not a Twitter Blue subscriber, nor was her account verified.
Frost’s publicist provided screenshots of tweets and the ban notice, as well as the following comment from the musician: “I think I was just getting so frustrated with his man-baby antics. Twitter is OURS to ruin, dammit! We got there first. I have a 15-year history of mocking people there. To have all that erased was a slap in the face. I just wish they’d given me half a chance, to delete those tweets & change my avatar & name back to Edith. I can’t even do that now!”
Pitchfork’s emails to Twitter representatives were unreturned; it is unclear whether the company still employs a press office. The New York Times noted last month that Twitter “no longer has a communications department.”
Read more about Edith Frost in Pitchfork’s roundup of “What to Stream From Drag City’s Catalog”:
