The Hill News

Rock journalist Dan Sinker has been revealed as the mind behind the popular @MayorEmanuel Twitter account that parodied Rahm Emanuel.

Sinker’s fake Twitter account public mocked the former Obama chief of staff and Chicago mayoral candidate’s habit of profanity, and became more popular than Emanuel’s own Twitter account.

By the numbers, @MayorEmanuel had 39, 062 followers as of February 28, while the real Emanuel Twitter account had 11,786 followers. Sinker's official Twitter has 2,050.

Sinker’s background is in punk rock, according to a story in The Atlantic, which revealed he was the mind behind the Twitter account:

Sinker is the founder of Punk Planet, a legendary zine that ran fro! m 1994 until 2007. Sinker and his tiny staff put out 80 issues during that time and created a punk rock tent big enough happily include Black Flag and filmmaker Miranda July.

Sinker said that he never meant to be critical of the real Emanuel.

“I was never really making fun of the guy,” Sinker said. “I was making fun with the guy.”

He explained to The Atlantic that in the beginning it was really just about using as much profanity as possible, but over time his inner storyteller kicked in.

“I started to think, I can really tell a story about this,” Sinker said.

The fake Twitter took on the shape of a sort of cross between a darkly humorous Twitter feed and serialized cartoon strip roughly following the events of the actual Chicago mayoral race.

When it appeared that the real Rahm Emanuel would have to drop out of the race after his Chicago residency was challenged, the fake E! manuel’s tweets were about Emanuel burning his possessions j! ust so h e could feel something.

And when the real Rahm Emanuel went on a tour of Chicago’s 50-wards in the home stretch of the mayoral campaign, @MayorEmanuel tweeted potty-mouthed dispatches (which had nothing to do with the actual 50-ward tour).