Entertainment

Meet the HuffPost employees who don’t fall for their own clickbait

Vince Coglianese Editorial Director
Font Size:

If you can’t stand the suspense of the Huffington Post’s story teases, you’ve got plenty of company at the Huffington Post.

Tweets from The Huffington Post Twitter account are like previews for next week’s “Mad Men” — filled with flashes of intrigue that reveal absolutely nothing.

“Former ‘Teen Mom’ star sold her sex tape for HOW MUCH?” wondered a @HuffingtonPost tweet on Monday. “And the school awarded @GLSEN’s ‘Gay Straight Alliance of the Year’ is…,” @HuffPostGay teased. “Extremely rare car for sale on eBay” @HuffPostBiz announced.

They’re all purposely vague of course, with HuffPost editors hoping readers click through and get lost in the site’s rabbit hole of liberal politics and sideboob.

But for Twitter users who want information immediately — not a click away — @HuffPoSpoilers provides solutions:

 

 

The mastermind behind the Cliffs Notes of the Huffington Post is 30-year-old Alex Mizrahi, whose @HuffPoSpoilers profile says, “I give in to @HuffingtonPost click-bait so you don’t have to.”

Mizrahi told The Daily Caller Monday that he is in between jobs after a stint as an associate producer for the 2013 “Shorty Awards” which “honor the best content producers on social media.”

He started the account last August and, as the Huffington Post itself reported Thursday, “the feed seems to be getting everyone’s attention.” Mizrahi doesn’t know exactly why the account started “catching everyone’s attention,” but he’s happy it did.

“I didn’t expect it to be as big of a deal as it is,” Mizrahi said during a phone interview from Brooklyn.

As of Monday afternoon, @HuffPoSpoilers has accrued nearly 12,500 followers who want a click-free breakdown of whatever The Huffington Post is tweeting. And among those are dozens of self-described Huffington Post employees.

Among the Huffington Post staffers who follow Mizrahi’s account:

  • Jordan Hillary (@JordanHillary) — Marketing Director @HuffingtonPost
  • Andrei Scheinkman (@ascheink) — Data editor at @huffingtonpost (@huffpostdata)
  • Brad J. Shannon (@bradjshannon) — Operations Manager @HuffPostPol
  • Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson) — Editor, @HuffPostMedia
  • Andy Campbell (@AndyBCampbell) — Editor for The Huffington Post’s Crime & Weird News sections
  • Basel Y. Hamdan (@BaselYHamdan) — Producer at @HuffPostLive
  • Sabrina Siddiqui ‏ (@SabrinaSiddiqui) — Politics Reporter at the Huffington Post
  • Lauren Leibowitz ‏(@elesel) — associate editor @huffpoststyle
  • Jaweed Kaleem ‏(@jaweedkaleem) — National Reporter @HuffingtonPost
  • Erin Clements (@Erin_J_Clements) — Editor @HuffPostCeleb
  • Taylor Trudon (@taylortrudon) — Associate editor @HuffPostTeen, @HuffingtonPost
  • Maxwell Strachan (@maxwellstrachan) — Business Editor, The Huffington Post
  • Ana Maria Benedetti (@ambenedetti) — Associate Vertical Editor at The Huffington Post @latinovoices
  • Ileana Llorens (@illorens) — News editor @HuffingtonPost.
  • Devon Murphy (@devonlmurphy) — Journalist & Huffington Post blog editor
  • PaulBlumenthal (@PaulBlu) — Reporter @HuffingtonPost covering campaign finance.
  • Mat Yurow ‏(@myurow) — Social media editor at @HuffPostLive.
  • joe satran (@joe_satran) — staff writer for the huffington post
  • Charlie Lindlar ‏(@charlielindlar) — Editorial Assistant, @HuffPostUK Blogs
  • Charli James (@charli) — Producer for @HuffPostLive
  • Milos Balac (@losh_me) — Producer @HuffPostLive
  • Dena Takruri (@DTakruri) — @HuffPostLive producer
  • Jessica Prois (@JessicaProis) — Editor @huffpostimpact.
  • Adam Rose ‏(@adjoro) — @huffingtonpost standards editor & golden rule enforcer.
  • Ryan Craggs (@ryanrcraggs) — world editor at the huffington post
  • Tim Stenovec (@timsteno) — Technology reporter at @HuffingtonPost.
  • Alexis Kleinman (@alexiskleinman) — Associate Editor of @HuffPostTech
  • Rebecca Searles (@beccabigwords) — Science journalist and social media editor @HuffingtonPost.
  • Dave Jamieson (@dave_jamieson) — Huffington Post labor reporter
  • Ned Simons (@nedsimons) — Assistant Political Editor, The Huffington Post UK
  • HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) — The latest political news from The Huffington Post
  • Peter Finocchiaro (@PLFino) — Front page editor @HuffingtonPost

Asked whether it struck him as odd that Huffington Post employees would follow an account meant to preempt clicks to their own site, Mizrahi said he didn’t think so.

But “it’s funny that they’re following me,” Mizrahi admitted. He said the employees have been sending him positive tweets about the account.

He explained that he started spoiling the vaguest Huffington Post tweets last year out of boredom. He doesn’t do it all day every day, but whenever he can’t sleep, he’s pulling the curtain off mysterious tweets.

The most “annoying or frustrating are the ones that keep out just one piece of crucial information,” he said, using as an example a tweet from Monday where @HuffPostCrime wouldn’t reveal the location of a “Tense manhunt for [a] man who stabbed [an] 8-year-old girl” — unless you clicked through of course.

Manhunt’s in Calaveras, CA & surrounding counties RT @huffpostcrime Tense manhunt for man who stabbed 8-year-old girl huff.to/18ebkd3

— HuffPo Spoilers (@HuffPoSpoilers) April 29, 2013

 

Mizrahi recognizes that a lot of gimmicky Twitter accounts like his often lose steam over time, and while he admitted that it could happen eventually, he said @HuffPoSpoilers isn’t going to die off quickly.

He predicted that the fastest way for his tweets to trickle off would be if the Huffington Post actually started coughing up some details.

“If they change the way they tweet, I’ll become obsolete, and I’m fine with that,” he offered. “And if they keep going, I’ll keep going.”

“I imagine it’ll lose steam at some point, like any flash in the pan Twitter account does,” Mizrahi said, referencing the endless number of parody accounts that pop up every day to varying degrees of success.

“I think the difference, though, is that mine is actually kind of a service.”

Follow Vince on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel