The Bridgetown Comedy Festival, founded in 2008 by Andy Wood, Matt Braunger, and Kim Brady, just celebrated its 7th year of bringing the finest comedy in the world to Portland, Oregon. This year featured over 200 comics, including Emo Philips, Reggie Watts, W. Kamau Bell, Nathan Fielder, and Dan Harmon, who drunkenly announced the end of “Community” on the afterparty dance floor.
Bridgetown features great programming, outings to donut shops and 80’s arcades, but has never had competitions or awards, which can take a group of people having a good time and make them bitter competitors.
However, this year a twitter account called @bridgetownfest claimed differently.
Bridgetown has always used @bridgetown to tweet show updates, promotions, gossip and important festival announcements to its 6000 followers. Six days ago, @bridgetownfest started talking up the same shows and comics, and immediately amassed 60K followers, which made their posts more prominent than the official twitter account. For several days, it tweeted innocuous posts, many of them copies of actual @bridgetown information. Comics started tweeting to both, unsure of which was the real account. Some followers, aware of the duplicitous account, started engaging in the alternate reality with the account. On Saturday of the festival, the account started asking for votes on such categories as Best Podcast, Best Open Mic Set, and Most Fun To Be Around.
On Sunday night, @bridgetownfest started announcing Best of The Fest comics, with awards and thanks going to Nathan Fielder and Emo Philips for their great work. Kanye had robbed Ian Karmel of his rightful place. T-shirt prices were reduced from $20 to 6 a pop. And then, the account said there was a big announcement coming.
Andy Wood Posted:
This fake Bridgetown account is bizarre: @bridgetownfest — is @randyliedtke behind it? @bridgetown is the real one.
— Andy Wood (@andytwood) May 11, 2014
The @Bridgetownfest twitter also asserted that it was the actual account and the @bridgetown was the interloper.
@jondaly @Braunger @BridgetownFest @bridgetown Can’t wait for the “big announcement” later today!
— Andy Wood (@andytwood) May 11, 2014
@bridgetownfest tearfully announced that this was the last Bridgetown festival, which came as a big surprise to founder and organizer Andy Wood. The twitter account thanked its followers, volunteers, comics, and audience members.
The account is now suspended, its tweets hidden, and the cover image has been revised to be about a festival in Australia.
Postscript: Anonymous sources confirm that the owner of the troll account was indeed Randy Liedtke, who was behind the Pace Picante conversation with Kyle Kinane last year.
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