Prince Harry may not be next in line, but by God, he is the king of oversharing.
With each new snippet revealed from her forthcoming memoir, “Spare” — be it altercation with bald brother Williamhis frozen penis or the time he slept with an older woman he “looked after [him] that a young stallion“- The Internet is having a ball.
In fact, Twitter users took it upon themselves to remix some of the stories shared by the Duke of Sussex, making the press tour all the more entertaining. Briefly impersonating BBC News, culture writer Hanna Phifer set out to create some hilarious tweets with Harry’s “revelations”.
A chirp read: “In his forthcoming memoir, Prince Harry writes that he first saw Meghan wearing headphones. “From that moment on, I knew I wanted to protect her like satin protects her afro.” Another tweet references a line from hit series “Friends” while one poked fun at Tyler Perry’s character Madea. (Let’s not forget that Perry is Lilibet’s godfather.)
With over 30,000 likes on the aforementioned tweet alone, many users likely assumed that Phifer had been leaving these stories in his drafts for weeks, planning the right moment to send them. The 27-year-old writer told HuffPost, “I’m not as calculated as people think I am.”
However, this isn’t the first time they’ve looked at bird app outlets; he once changed his profile picture and Twitter handle to resemble the popular account Movie Updates.
“I’ll randomly get bored and change my screen name and icon to look like a gossip blog and post a bunch of fake news tweets,” she said. “This time it was pretty much the same thing. I mean, some of the stuff that’s actually in his book is way more ridiculous than anything I’ve actually tweeted about. It was so much fun to see people trying to analyze what was real.”
Phifer said @writebyhanna is technically his professional Twitter account, but thankfully not affected by policies that prohibit parody or copycat accounts.
“It’s like two people working on Twitter right now. Nobody pays attention to me,” she said with a laugh. Not everyone is so lucky though; actor and comedian Jaboukie Young-Whitee.g, he was banned several times and lost his verified blue check, most notably after impersonating the FBI.
In addition to revealing the urgent need for media education in this country, Phifer’s successful tweets have, above all else, inspired further iterations from other Black Twitter users.
Content creator and therapist Shahem Mclaurin he wrote, “CORRECTION: Prince Harry reveals in autobiography that he credits US rapper Ice Spice for encouraging him during difficult family split.” Citing the Bronx rapper’s lyrics and following up on Duke’s identity, Mclaurin tweeted: “When he said ‘You got me dirty but what do I do?’ it resonated.
There are probably two camps here: utter disbelief at this train wreck you can’t look away from, and general indifference to the affairs of yet another white family caught up in a deeply racist colonial institution. Phifer simply said she was fed up with the drama of the royal family.
“I have real criticisms of the institution, but I find it boring. With these memoirs, more interesting things are now coming out. This is essentially just a family drama, just in the context of this institution,” Phifer said. “But still, I guess [Harry] she should just find a therapist because people try to attribute it more than anything. At the end of the day, he really said in a recent interview that he still cares about the monarchy. It’s not these radicals… I like to tease him.”
In the evergreen words of New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, “We should all know less about each other.” Regardless, “Spare” is the gift that keeps on giving, thanks to Black Twitter’s ability to bring levity to any situation.
