What do you do when you wake up to discover a Twitter account that you created as a joke has garnered more than 300,000 followers in a matter of days?
Sounds like a Sochi problem.
More accurately, it sounds like @Sochiproblems, the parody Twitter account created Feb. 4 by Alexander Broad, a journalism student at Centennial College. From rusty water to stray dogs to Olympic ring misfires, @Sochiproblems retweets pictures and articles about everything non-functional at the games.
Ironically, Broad got the inspiration for @Sochiproblems by discovering a fairly common Canada problem: He spilled Tim Hortons on his jacket on his way to school.
Trawling for breaking news stories in class later on, he came across a few quirky tweets from reporters in Sochi. Holding them up against the stain on his jacket – a ‘Canada problem’ – the idea struck him.
“I thought ‘oh that’s a Canadian problem,’” the Pickering native told cp24.com Sunday night. “Sochi problems would be a great Twitter handle. That’s how the account was born.”
Thinking he’d perhaps garner 15 to 30 followers, he signed up for the handle for fun, fired off one or two tweets, and then went about his business.
But unbeknownst to him, Broad had created a lightning rod for social media users looking for the lighter side of all the pageantry and circumstance surrounding the games.
“I just kind of casually watched it explode in front of me, completely in shock that it was actually going to get that crazy,” Broad says. “I never really thought in the span of four days that something so small would grow into something so huge, that it would make news around the world.”
As of Sunday night, the account has 335,000 followers, over 100,000 more than the official account for the Sochi Games.
“It was on my phone for a bit and my phone wouldn’t stop ringing,” Broad says. “At that point I didn’t know if I should chuck my phone into a toilet to stop it from ringing.”
While there have been reports that Russians are displeased about the perceived slight, Broad says he hasn’t received much pushback to date.
As to the reason for the account’s popularity, Broad himself is a little stumped.
“I don’t know why people thought it was so funny,” he says. “It’s still kind of a shock as to why 300,000 plus people have followed this account and made it this big in less than a week.”
While he aims to keep things light, he says he’s aware that some tweets might appear offensive to some users.
“Others have in fact tweeted things looking at it as a political statement,” Broad says. “That’s made me careful about what I tweet.”
While he’s not sure what will happen to the account after the games are done, the account is loosely connected to his eventual goal of becoming a sports reporter.
“I’m still deciding how I’m going to move forward with this,” he says.
So what would he tweet about if he were to post about Canadian problems?
“I’m gonna be an hour late for class because of a backup on the 401,” Broad jokes.
@Josh_F is on Twitter. Remember for instant breaking news follow @cp24 on Twitter.
