Who is UEA’s Twitter rabbit?
Someone out there is impersonating a campus rabbit online…
The UEA Rabbit parody Twitter account is taking campus by storm… but no one is owning up to being the bright-eyed mastermind behind it.
With a Twitter account created on the 20th of September – just in time for Freshers’ Week – the rabbit describes itself as “roaming around the UEA campus”. You can follow it here.
And its followers include senior lecturer Dr Kevin Williams and the Chief Executive of the Student Union, Jim Dickinson.
UEA is famous for its large rabbit population, and in 2012 they were included in part of the world’s longest behavioural study, broadcast on the BBC.
And while the student voice of the rabbit refused to reveal their identity, we did manage to find out a little bit more about the rabbits at UEA and what they get up to, or what this joker imagines they spend their free time doing.
The account has 95 followers, but many are already talking about it because of its updates. The rabbit tweeted about students: “Most are great. Some leave the odd bottle VK lying around. If my luck’s really in I’ll even find a slice of pizza (vegetarian only of course!)”
The rabbit revealed that the rivalry of Derby Day between students is present in the burrows, too: “Being a rabbit at UEA is great fun, oh UEA is wonderful! You’d be hopping mad to go anywhere else. Especially Essex.”
And for all of those hoping to catch a UEA rabbit, there’s one piece of advice you should proceed with: “Do it sober. It’s more of a challenge and is more entertaining for me.”
The university itself even tweeted support for the account, with its @UEA50years handle promoting the rabbit using the Follow Friday hashtag.
It’s not just students that benefit from UEA’s renovations, either: “Now we’ve got WiFi access all around campus I can keep up with what’s going on 24/7.”
But the individual behind the account was offended when asked if it was all a bit strange: “Why is it weird? There are millions of users on there now, it’s just as common as Facebook. At least I’m not on Tinder!”
And this definitely, definitely isn’t a ploy to increase popularity, as the user declared that: “I’m popular enough already.”
Do you know who’s behind the UEA rabbit?