“Alt” can be read as alternative or alter ego, but the word has its own life as the term for secondary account. They’re not that different from the urge to create “finstas” (fake Instagrams) or private Snapchat accounts, pseudonymous accounts where users can, paradoxically, really be themselves.
And some of Twitter’s sexiest alts have huge followings. The alt known as A Considerate Top (not safe for work) explained this to me while recounting his origin story. (The app, unlike other social media platforms, doesn’t compress images, and quality matters: Penises are variable, but if given two identical pictures with the only difference being image quality, you’d be hard-pressed to find ardent admirers of manhood who prefer the grainy one.) He started using his handle - which, translated into heterosexual English, refers to a penetrating partner in gay sex who, against popular stereotype, has a caring nature - to post his nudes and sex dates because he ran out of space on his iPhone. He says that when he went to bed on July 17, his account was a fun side project with a couple dozen followers.Ī Considerate Top (ACT) woke the next day and found his 20 or so followers had ballooned to the thousands. A popular account had retweeted one of his videos. The video in question is one minute and two seconds long.
