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TIL Gradient Accounts

TIL Twitter Gradient Accounts

Other people on Twitter had noticed them as well and referred to them (usually with irritation) as “gradient accounts,” because many of their profile pictures are not of human faces or anything else, just color gradients. Gradient accounts have usernames that sound like AIM usernames: @f41ryluvrr, @urf41ryg1rl, @moonlouvrr, @newmoonbaby2, @glitteryxhearts. Through their tweets, they identify as overthinkers and dreamers and hot people, and they often profess melancholy and romantic longing. The romantic longing sometimes clashes with casual misanthropy; the all-lowercase disclosures of trauma and malaise are mixed with playful Gossip Girl memes. Their content is more popular than I can possibly explain, and they know it.

Was totally media nerd sniped by this, with thoughts of the Marly Krushkova arc from Count Zero running through my head. Somehow real people participating in a mass consensual hallucination makes it even more Gibsonian.

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