CondeElevator & the Virtual Gossip Wunderkind

Social Networking has so many different uses and practical applications, but there’s also a voyeuristic side where you can anonymously observe micro-events as they’re unfolding while passively engaging in a Tweet convo that was never meant for your eyes, but simultaneously willingly shared.  This past week a new version of this messy social conundrum occurred when the Twitter feed @CondeElevator appeared out of thin air.  Supposedly the feed’s tweets are direct quotes from inside the elevator of the Conde Nast building which publishes the magazines Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ, and numerous other periodicals.  As anyone would assume, the tweets are just as catty and absurdly haughty New York as you could imagine coming from the workplace of the The Devil Wears Prada.  The tweets ranged from improper meal choices, social faux-pas, and fashion snafus, to improper driver behavior and innocuous office banter.

Culturally the really interesting tangent this Twitter feed provides is the intersection of reality within the virtual world of social networking.  Even though the majority of people feel this Twitter account was a real thing actually being beamed directly from the Conde Nast offices, there’s definitely an outside chance that it’s entirely a cultural simulation of sorts.  Someone could easily live in New York for a few years, obtain a fundamental grasp of NYC-esque small talk, watch Meryl Streep verbally tear apart her assistants a few times on DVD, and you could come up with a realistic twitter feed that’s half based on reality and half on a composite of assumed reality.  Even The Devil Wears Prada itself was a composite of the author and her friend’s early work experience in New York, so couldn’t this feed just be a composite of another composite, which would make it an entirely meta-conception.

For the most part though, the evidence points to the account being based on actual conversations and interactions within the building, but for the average Twitter follower, the context of these real interactions is still only obtained through the anonymous poster, their own biased editing, and whatever convos they randomly get to hear.  So even if it is real we’re still only getting a very one-sided and decidedly quote worthy account of said elevator.  More then anything though this Twitter feed completely echoes the old adage “the walls have ears” and in this case, a Twitter Feed, 63,000 followers (which were amazingly accumulated in a matter of one week), and gallons of controversy almost overnight.  So much controversy in fact the anonymous poster declared yesterday the feed was getting to big and decided to stop in fear of it affecting his employment at Conde Nast.  At the time same numerous online sleuths were playing their own game of Clue and deciphering the online paper trail to unmask the cyber gossip wordsmith.  In the world of social networking and fly by night Twitter feeds the Internet exists in its own light-speed time zone, and by this same time next week another meme will rise from the ashes to provoke subtle controversy and virtual shenanigans.  Here’s a list of the most cringe-worthy tweets as compiled by BusinessInsider.

Twitter Followers – 63,625

 

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