Media Monster

Well, At Least There’s Still I’ll Have Another’s Bizarre Twitter Account

On the off chance you have a favorite horse-related Twitter account, it’s almost certainly @Horse_ebooks. Horse_ebooks is, for the uninitiated, the beloved e-book-shilling spambot whose tweets contain short bursts of text that range from nonsensical to almost philosophical – and became so beloved that various sites performed in-depth investigations to learn more about who is responsible for the phenomenon.

But now it’s got competition for horse-tweeting supremacy in the form of an actual horse: Kentucky Derby/Preakness winner I’ll Have Another. I’ll Have Another was, of course, withdrawn from the Belmont Stakes and retired due to an injury, which upset a lot of people. And some of those people made their feelings known by expressing condolences to the horse… by tweeting at it. Because I’ll Have Another has a Twitter account.

And not only does I’ll Have Another have a Twitter account, people: “I’ll Have Another” tweets from that Twitter account, like it’s actually the horse saying things. This was all news to me until I saw this tweet from Matthew De George, who’s written for SportsGrid in the past:

What morons are sending messages to a tweeting freaking horse?!?!?! RT @Ill_HaveAnother Thank you for the kind messages

— Matthew De George (@sportsdoctormd) June 8, 2012

…at which point I pretty much lost it with joy over how creepy this all seemed.

I am out of the Belmont. Thank you to all of you that have supported me through the Triple Crown. Press conference Barn 2 at 1 pm EST

— I’ll Have Another (@Ill_HaveAnother) June 8, 2012

Why would they do this?! Was anyone else as freaked out as I was? Was I just the last person to find out it existed? (To that question: the account has a little under 9,000 followers, so it wasn’t exactly a NotTildaSwinton-like sensation.) And is this… common? Giving a horse a Twitter page and having it tweet? A quick search of the other horses at the Belmont turned up only one other horse tweeter: Union Rags. So, not too common (though still more common than I’d have thought).

And Union Rags isn’t nearly as prolific as I’ll Have Another, who in addition to posting over 1,300 tweets, retweets others constantly. Some have suggested that it would be impossible for I’ll Have Another to do this all himself, since he is a horse. To that, I say: BLASPHEMY. He is a miracle horse as proven by his Derby and Preakness wins, and as such became fluent in English, and sends all these out himself. (Maybe with help from Siri.) As for this observation from De George:

@glennrd Somewhere, there’s a PR exec patting himself on the back for this innovative use of social media.

— Matthew De George (@sportsdoctormd) June 8, 2012

In reality, no one was patting themselves on the back. Why? Because at least in my mind, the PR exec who suggested the I’ll Have Another start tweeting… is also a horse. A horse wearing a business suit, and this on St. Patrick’s Day. (It is a hard-working horse, yet also festive.) If it were physically possible, though, the horse would fully deserve a self-pat on the back, because if we’re not going to have Triple Crown history today, the horse telling us all how he feels about not being able to make Triple Crown history is really the next-best thing. Some people find the entire sport of horse racing creepy. What could be a creepier complement than this?

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