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Spoilsport Lawyers To Make Twitter Unmask The Wetherspoons Two

By Holly Brockwell on at

The high court has given Twitter until mid-January to reveal who's behind two Wetherspoons parody accounts, after people lacking in critical thinking skills believed they were real.

The Wetherspoons Two, as we've named them, are @Wetherspoon__UK:

And @SpoonsTom:

While you can see that JD Wetherspoon might not be thrilled to have those tweets associated with their brand, it's also pretty damn clear that neither is official. @Wetherspoon__UK's bio says "Not associated with @jdwtweet or JDWetherspoon!" and @SpoonsTom's says "In no way associated with the cunts at Wetherspoon!"

The two accounts are run by the same person, who doesn't seem very happy about being unmasked:

JD Wetherspoon's issue with the accounts is that some people apparently do think they're real (depressing), with one angry dude even coming to list his grievances in person after believing a tweet about banning poppies in Wetherspoon's pubs was legit. The chain's barrister said:

"This stuff goes around like wildfire. Some old boy from the States … came to the AGM in London and asked some very heated questions of the board why this was the position."

The situation hasn't been helped by the fact that JD Wetherspoon deleted its own account back in April:

That means people looking for Twitter content from a big brand like JDW only find the parody accounts. You can't really blame the parody accounts for that, can you?

In a more understandable grievance, Spoons' lawyer bemoaned parody tweets during the World Cup stating that all the chain's pubs would close early if England reached the final. Obviously, that didn't happen, "but had it come to pass, what could have been the biggest beer day in English history would have possibly not been for the chain," he said.

The company assumes the tweeter is an ex-employee, but that's bazillions of people. And besides, it's not hard to mimic the cultural associations of the discount boozers without any inside knowledge of the chain whatsoever. We're pretty sure the guy behind @ShippamsPaste never worked there.

Twitter didn't argue with the court's decision, and will hand over whatever they have on the Wetherspoons Two. Do you think that's the right call, or should Twitter be focusing more on the literal Nazis on their platform? Let us know in the comments.

Main image: Ewan Munro via Flickr CC

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