Nope, but I was a fan.
For those not in the know, VCBrags is a satirical twitter account which retweets Venture Capitalists bragging about their accomplishments.
For a moment, I was one of the only people to know the true identity of VCBrags. VCBrags was Silicon Valley's hottest kept secret. The account sheared the tech scene right down the middle: people who take themselves very seriously, and the ones who enjoy a few shitposts in their diet.
I managed to become twitter friends with the account after producing my own share of internet hi-jinx. I supplied a few joke ideas for videos and even did some voiceover work for a romcom inspired clip poking fun at Scott Galloway’s unfortunate investment advice. As a thank you, the anonymous VCBrags hid some smooth brain "clues" in plain sight to troll their audience.
1 + 1 = 2 !
Sometime in mid 2020, VC @shl was convinced I was VCBrags and crafted his own troll posts, telling his chums he had cracked the code. That week, hundreds of VCs started following my personal account and sliding into my DMs. I got blocked by a few, praised by a few, and some offered to write me checks. I never confirmed I was the account, but I may or may not have taken some of their money 🤔🤑.
Not long after, VCBrags trolled @shl back, dropping a fake clue linking him to the account. It was a tweet which looked as if Sahil had accidentally tweeted from the wrong account and frantically deleted it. It worked better than expected. The internet swiftly assumed Sahil was behind VCBrags. Some people believed he was a genius, while some couldn’t believe he’d have the nuts to dunk on his fellow thought leaders. With his pristine reputation at stake, he begged the internet to believe he wasn't behind VCBrags, now that the tables had turned on his witch hunt. The identity of VCBrags continued to be ambiguous.
Months later, VCBrags unknowingly shared a tweet featuring my ex girlfriend, who I had a rough breakup with. It was a screenshot of my ex blocking VCBrags. VCBrags posts screenshots of their haters blocking the account as a trophy. This is what pure evil looks like.
It was still a big ol yikes given the whole dramatic ex thing, so I asked VCBrags to remove the tweet, but it was too late. My ex incorrectly claimed I was behind the tweet, and woke twitter fired their pandemic amplified rage cannon at me for some feel good points. The pile on was spectacular, I had no idea strangers with an internet connection had so many creative opinions about me.
Eventually, Mitchell Wakefield, a user researcher at NHS Digital doxxed himself as the creator and operator of VCBrags, but facts weren’t enough for the people. Tin foil hat theorists postulated visionary ideas like Mitchell was a hired scapegoat, and I was teaming up with mastermind Jason Calacanis, the dude who said he was the “third or fourth investor in Uber” (Christ, that’d be an amazing operation if true).
I asked Mitchell if he’d be interested in sharing some more. Mitchell claims he was unaware of the carnage he set off, believing it would off-brand for VCBrags to smooth things over. His self-doxxing Medium post and tweets have since vanished from from the internet.
It was brutal, but hey, it was just my honor and reputation that got reamed. I had to take a long break from the internet, but it took only a few milliseconds for twitter to move on to their next target to devour. A lot of people nuked their tweetz, because they know if you delete something, it never happened.
So yeah, I'm not VCBrags. It's good to be back in this internet cesspool with all of you. 🤡
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