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."
After these two incidents - as well as a few others involving Ewan McGregor, Maya Angelou, Ben Stiller, the falsely reported deaths of both Jeff Goldblum and Britney Spears and a civil lawsuit filed by Tony La Russa, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals - Twitter responded by adding more security alerts and a "Verification Certificate" option to its accounts. But will this be enough to stop the problem?
I asked CBC broadcaster Jian Gomeshi - who is very active in the world of social networking as well as on the airwaves - how he contends with the Twitter pretenders and his response (Facebooked to me from Los Angeles, fittingly) was interesting.
In his view, official authentication is slightly hopeless, given the size and scope of the Internet. The real challenge, he says, is to be a good social networker.
"I think it's about creating a Twitter style that is so personalized it cannot be easily replicated," he wrote. "The more unique or idiosyncratic you make your tweets, the more obvious it will be over time that it's YOU rather than an ersatz version of you."
So basically if I'm not on Twitter, the fake me wins? And if I am, then I have to work harder to be a wittier, quirkier, more truly authentic version of myself? I feel exhausted just thinking about it.
Nonetheless, I have surrendered and opened my first Twitter account. If you really need to, you can follow me @leahmclaren. If, however, you would rather read tweets about how I just did cocaine off a Jonas Brother's backside, I'll have to refer you back to @LeahFiles. It promises to be much more entertaining than the real thing.