If imitation is a form of flattery, I owe my Twitter impersonator a beer

A couple of weeks ago, I was out for dinner in Toronto with a friend who glanced at his iPhone and chuckled. “Someone just twittered to say they saw you here with me. They want to know if we're on a date."

I was confused. “Who? Where?"

He shrugged. “I dunno, one of my Twitter followers."

I looked around the restaurant. It was full. There were only about 40 tables. About a quarter of the people appeared to be fiddling with phones.

A shiver went up my spine. And that was just the beginning.

A week or so later, the same friend e-mailed to ask: “Is @LeahFiles actually you?"

Again, I was confused. What's @LeahFiles?

Turns out it's a Twitter page with my name, my bio, my photo and a link to my website on it. With just under 300 followers – among them a number of friends, acquaintances and professional affiliations, including this very newspaper – @LeahFiles is having a grand old time (at press time, 174 tweets and counting) pretending to be me.

The question is: Why?

I don't Twitter, mostly because the act of doing so, I am beginning to suspect, isn't so much about saying something as not saying nothing – even if the nothing you're not saying is being said not by you but by someone else. (I dare you to say that five times fast.)

As for my Twitter impersonator, it's always weird to read about yourself in public, but reading about how you “got wasted and acted out the Phoebe Cates scene from Fast Times in the Yorkville fountains," self-harmed with Iggy Pop or masqueraded as a Playboy Bunny to get into a film-festival party and then woke up at the Sutton Place between cardboard cutouts of Seth Rogen and Michael Cera (when in fact you were at home making chili) is much weirder still.

Presumably @LeahFiles is styling itself as a parody, which I wouldn't mind if it were actually funny. But if that's true, why is this poseur chatting with my friends and colleagues who innocently tweeted to say hello?

Steal my identity, fine, but fool my gullible Aunt Patsy and you've crossed the line.

The truth is, having a Twitter impersonator appeals to my lazy side. Don't most real celebrities actually pay someone else to do it for them? If one assumes that Twitter is mainly about exhibitionism, personal brand-building and creating a following, be it positive, negative or indifferent, then I owe @LeahFiles a beer.

The more I thought about it, the more I was actually quite chuffed with myself for having a Twitter stalker, imitation being the best form of flattery and all that. Until, that is, I found out that Twitter impersonators are actually part of an online social epidemic, which may even threaten the long-term viability of Twitter itself.

Scrolling through my fake page, I noticed exchanges between my fake self and Peter Mansbridge. Wow! I thought. This whole publicity thing is really working. I now have famous friends I didn't even know about.

But when I did some calling around, I found that @petermansbridg is an imposter as well.

Are there no real celebrities on Twitter?

Well, yes, apparently there are. But increasingly, they spend more time trying to distinguish themselves from the fake ones. Earlier this year, when Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska, she took the time to tweet that fake Palin tweets “r doing their thing today." And when Kanye West discovered a similar Twitter hoax, he got all up on his full caps, blogging: “THE PEOPLE AT TWITTER KNOW I DON'T HAVE A F*CKING TWITTER SO FOR THEM TO ALLOW SOMEONE TO POSE AS ME AND ACCUMULATE OVER A MILLION NAMES IS IRRESPONSIBLE AND DECEITFUL TO THERE FAITHFUL USERS."

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