Marcin Walski; The NODEHAUS Conversation

CALVIN TRAN

August 9, 2018

Marcin Walski is a non-descript guy. Hanging out with him at the Carnegie Club, his slight smile hints a glint of knowing. This is the guy behind several twitter accounts you might know. Today, he’s sold off most of them, but still owns the account “Typical White Girl.” These twitter accounts, with followers in the several thousand to several million, launched in the early days of Twitter and amassed their following far before legitimate companies and brands knew what social media even was. When did Walski start his? Sophomore year of high school.

And that was fairly common, says Walski. Remember the Will Ferrell twitter account? Launched by a kid in California, who at some point was raking in half a million a year. These kids had no idea what to do with the money.” Today, their business model is fairly common and well-understood by marketing companies and business undergraduates alike, but at the time, this was the bleeding edge of social media.

As he described it, there were just so many kids fabricating parody twitter accounts, amassing a following, and selling off to companies either the whole account or slipping ads into the content stream. Most of them didn’t need more than one person running them, with Walski himself being the sole manager of his accounts. All he needed was some software to analyze data and schedule posts.

Walski sold his first twitter account at 10k followers, and went on to launch the Ted ‘parody’ account right before the Seth McFarlane movie came out. At his max, he held 8 or 9 accounts, each with their own following, data insights, content, and content sales. With this money, he was able to pay for college and even start his own cryptofund.

Now that he graduated, he’s taken his steps away from the twitter parody account world. While he holds onto his “Typical White Girl” account for any potential need in the future, he’s set his sights on a new horizon: financial consulting. I asked him what he thought about the shifts in internet culture arising at the moment, what with the politics, censorship, and consolidation of companies. He noted that companies, like Facebook, had begun to aggressively shut down accounts, but after a bit of a pause, he responded in peak finance-fashion that it doesn’t really matter. “Culture evolved overtime with each generation. Just when you get old enough to appreciate what you grew up with, there’s constantly a new culture behind you.”

One thing he was excited about is the e-sports world, and that Twitch is the most exciting company online right now, a platform also populated with some of the internet community’s youngest stars. Perhaps that’s a lesson here; follow the youth.​