Bad news, everyone: we’ve known for a while that the infamous “Fake Kaz Hirai” Twitter account was ready to hang it up, but it has finally happened. Mark Doherty, the man behind the account, has unmasked himself, and is riding off into the sunset after running a successful charity campaign.
Doherty revived his old, personal Twitter account, and released a lengthy statement thanking all the people who followed the Fake Kaz Hirai Twitter, making it so popular (currently sitting at over 120k followers). He said that he wanted the account to go out with a bang originally, but the departure of the real Kaz Hirai from his role as president and SEO of Sony.
Back in February, Doherty launched a JustGiving campaign to collect donations for SpecialEffect, a charity organization that helps people with disabilities access technology. Set to close on the day of “retirement,” the campaign raised £1,541.14, well over the initial £599 target.
The Fake Kaz Hirai Twitter account has been running since 2011, and drew so much attention through its spot-on parody humor of video game executive language, even big names in the industry such as Shuhei Yoshida and Neil Druckmann followed it in the end. Even Hirai himself became aware of it, and was the key reason the account was never shut down by Twitter, which will have parody accounts taken down upon request.
[Source: Twitter]
