On May 19, @BPGlobalPR started sending out messages about the Gulf oil spill to Twitter. The parody account took on the persona of an inept and insensitive public relations pro working at BP-and it viciously skewered BP's messaging attempts from behind a veil of anonymity. Within a week, it ate Twitter.

The writer's identity became the guessing game of the summer, one that I became deeply enmeshed in after a reporter incorrectly wrote that I had outed Twitter provocateur Mike Monteiro as the account's author. (I had not.) Ironically, however, the erroneous story eventually led me to the 26 year-old prankster behind the account who, after [...]