A journalist let strangers take over his Twitter account, and the hilarity escalated pretty quickly

It all started with a simple tweet and an idea. Yuri Victor’s going on a trip for a week, so he decided to give us — yep, all of us — access to his Twitter account. Craaaaazy, right? Or perhaps genius?!

I’m on vacation for the next week so I’m outsourcing my tweets to you. Feel free to tweet as @yurivictor https://t.co/qibdCc8icv

— Yuri Victor 🖤 (@yurivictor) September 2, 2016

Even he knows it’s a risky move to make.

I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming benevolence of Internet Randoms.

— Yuri Victor 🖤 (@yurivictor) September 2, 2016

ICYMI, Yuri’s not just any old guy. He not only works for Vox Media, but is also “an award winning designer, developer, and journalist, that has a history of creating ground-breaking news technologies,” states his LinkedIn account.

We’d agree that handing over his Twitter account to Internet strangers is def a ground-breaking technology, to say the least. I mean, would you do it?!

After all, not all of us can be Katy Perry and have the most followers ever (at least, as of two months ago). Nor can we be Martha Stewart and post funny-without-knowing-it tweets.

As Yuri stated, maybe he’s onto something here.

Collaborative tweets are the ~future~ of journalism

— Yuri Victor 🖤 (@yurivictor) September 2, 2016

Now, it’s hard to tell if Yuri posted that, or one of his Twitter doppelgangers did. Also, apparently, according to Twitter, some results have been filtered.

So, pressure’s on — now’s your chance to tweet as @yurivictor.

Stumped with what to write?

Here are some ideas of what others have posted and we’re still in disbelief at all the randomness.

Once he gets a look at these tweets, Yuri will be in a real *yuri* to get back! #puns

— Yuri Victor 🖤 (@yurivictor) September 2, 2016

Help, I am trapped in the body of @yurivictor! 🙁

— Yuri Victor 🖤 (@yurivictor) September 2, 2016

This is an interesting idea.

We could start a conversation about a topic?!

— Yuri Victor 🖤 (@yurivictor) September 2, 2016

And others are using it for self-promotion. (Btw, @CaseyNewton has 32.4K followers and is a Silicon Valley editor @ verge.)

Follow @CaseyNewton, arguably the best Twitter account

— Yuri Victor 🖤 (@yurivictor) September 2, 2016

Some people seem a bit concerned…

hey yuri it's winston are you sure this is a good idea

— Yuri Victor 🖤 (@yurivictor) September 2, 2016

Personally, we think it’s fab-u-lous. After all, everyone out there knows Yuri’s doing this, so anything written can’t really be held against him, right?!

And even Yuri may be a bit paranoid about losing followers (unless a doppleganger wrote this one, too?).

oh shit, i just realized i'm going to have no followers left when i get back from vacation.

— Yuri Victor 🖤 (@yurivictor) September 2, 2016

We should start a hashtag. #TweetAsYuriVictor

— Yuri Victor 🖤 (@yurivictor) September 2, 2016

Agreed!

To get your Yuri on, you can tweet as him here.

And, you may know that Yuri’s no stranger to Internet fame.

A couple years ago, Yuri tweeted about Netflix crashing and blaming Verizon for it.

Oh snap, netflix. pic.twitter.com/wMfavoHOyj

— Yuri Victor 🖤 (@yurivictor) June 4, 2014

Now, Yuri’s experiment may cause Twitter to crash. Okay, we hope not, but you know what we mean.

Which tweets are real? Which are not? We may never know…  until Yuri resurfaces from his trip, at least. So, in the meantime, #TweetAsYuriVictor. We’ll be watching you…