Prince Harry might not be next in line, but my god he is king of sharing.
With every new excerpt revealed from his forthcoming memoir, Spare, be it that Arguing with his bald brother Williamhis frozen penis or the time he slept with an older woman who “treated [him] like a young stallion“ – the internet is having fun.
In fact, Twitter users have taken it upon themselves to remix some of the stories the Duke of Sussex shared to make the press tour even more entertaining. Culture writer Hanna Phifer, who briefly posed as BBC News, decided to craft some hilarious tweets showcasing Harry’s “revelations.”
A tweet Read: “In his forthcoming memoir, Prince Harry writes about seeing Meghan in a bonnet for the first time. ‘From that moment I knew I wanted to protect her like Satin protects her Afro hair.’” Another tweet referenced a line from the hit series “Girlfriends”, while poking fun at Tyler Perry’s Madea character. (Let’s not forget that Perry is Lilibet’s godfather.)
With over 30,000 likes for the above tweet alone, many users probably assumed that Phifer let these stories sit in her drafts for weeks to time the right time to hit send. The 27-year-old writer told HuffPost, “I’m not as calculated as people probably think.”
However, this isn’t the first time she’s posed as an outlet on the Vogel app. She once changed her profile picture and Twitter name to resemble the popular account Movie Updates.
“I happen to get bored and change my screen name and icon to resemble a gossip blog and post a bunch of fake news tweets,” she said. “It was basically the same this time. I mean, some of the things that are actually in his book are way more ridiculous than anything I’ve actually tweeted. It was so funny to see people trying to analyze what was real.”
Phifer said @writtenbyhanna is technically her professional Twitter account, but thankfully was unscathed by policies prohibiting parody accounts or impersonators.
“There are about two people who work at Twitter right now. Nobody pays attention to me,” she said, laughing. However, not everyone is so lucky; actor and comedian Jaboukie Young-Whitefor example, was banned multiple times and lost his verified blue check, particularly after posing as an FBI.
Aside from demonstrating the urgent need for media literacy in this country, Phifer’s hit tweets have most importantly inspired further iterations from other black Twitter users.
Content Creator and Therapist Shahem Mclaurin wrote, “BREAKING: Prince Harry reveals in his autobiography that he credits American rapper Ice Spice with encouraging him through the rocky separation from family.” Mclaurin, quoting the Bronx rapper’s lyrics and impersonating the Duke, tweeted, “As she said, ‘You soiled me, but what do I do?’ it worked.”
I guess there’s two camps here: sheer disbelief at staring at this trainwreck you can’t look away from, versus general indifference to the affairs of yet another white family enmeshed in a deeply racist colonial institution. Simply put, Phifer said she’s just bored with the royal family drama.
“I have genuine criticisms of the institution, but I just find it boring. Now, with this memoir, more interesting things are coming out. This is essentially just family drama, just in the context of that institution,” Phifer said. “But still, I think [Harry] should just see a therapist because people try to put that down more than anything else. At the end of the day he even said in a recent interview that the monarchy is still close to his heart. They’re not those radicals… I just like to make fun of them.”
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 coming thanks to Black Twitter’s ability to bring lightness to any situation.
