Satirical “Bicycle Lobby” Twitter Account Fakes Out Media Giants

The parody Twitter account "Bicycle Lobby" jokingly claimed to have placed white flags on top of the Brooklyn bridge this week. Reporters from the AP and New York Daily News didn't get it.
Reporters from the AP and New York Daily News took a tweet from the @BicycleLobby account a little too seriously.

The @BicycleLobby Twitter account is a parody inspired by last year’s unhinged rant about bike-share from Wall Street Journal columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz. Its running joke for the past 13 months has been that “the all-powerful bike lobby” envisioned by Rabinowitz is real — and yes, it controls the universe.

Sample tweet from July 20: “Today is the 45th anniversary of the day we faked the Moon landing.”

So when someone noticed this morning that the American flags atop the Brooklyn Bridge had been replaced with white flags, naturally @BicycleLobby took credit:

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The funny thing is, some big news organizations took the bait. First the New York Daily News and then the Associated Press reported that bicyclists had claimed credit for the prank. Not long after, those early reports were scrubbed from the Daily News site and the paper was calling it a mystery. But News 1130 in Vancouver, BC, was still carrying the AP story at 2 p.m.

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Click to enlarge

No one seemed to be enjoying it more than the mysterious @BicycleLobby author:

  • Tyler

    I thought I had a bit of respect for Borough President Eric Adams until his crazy comments today about this ‘terrorist’ action. I guess 7 months is pretty good. I usually have lost faith in local politicians before they even finish with the election!

  • StepUpAndSaySomething

    Mainstream news will kill you.

  • Kyriacos Stavrinides

    Sorry, I may have been slightly responsible for this. Then again, I couldn’t really tell it was a bike lane just by looking at it. If they’re was a sign I didn’t see it, because walking across the Brooklyn bridge the last thing I’m looking for are the signs.

  • Steven Halstien

    Remember when we were promised that the Patriot Act would only target terrorists? When we were made to feel that unless we were doing anything wrong we didn’t need to worry about being spied on? Remember when Obama signed the NDAA into action denying us a right to a fair trial and threatening “terrorists” with indefinite detention? Well, now putting white flags on a bridge is an act of terrorism. Now what? Do New Yorkers feel terrorized?

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