JEDDAH — Sarcastic accounts on Twitter are proliferating, encouraged by hundreds of thousands of followers. According to ranking sites and tools, these accounts are ranked among the top. These accounts mostly tweet jokes and poke fun at the life of an average Saudi. The owners of these accounts also tend to employ sarcasm in criticizing decisions issued by officials. They also target politicians in their tweets, implying that behind these accounts are actors, officials or sometimes journalists. Speaking to a local daily, Marwan Al-Muraisi, a social networking and e-marketing expert, said these accounts show there is a lot of hidden talent and the owners leverage on Twitter because of the wide exposure they get. “It is not surprising to see these people ranked close to religious figures and media stars in terms of number of followers. They should not be classified as talented, but (rather) super talented.” Al-Muraisi also said creators of these entertaining accounts preferred to remain anonymous so they would have the freedom to criticize the way they want. He said that the hundreds of thousands of followers only indicate that these accounts are widely accepted. He added that he was at one point collecting all these tweets as a local printing office in the Kingdom was thinking of printing a book about these tweets. — SG
