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The Curious Rise of Twitter Power Broker Yashar Ali
In just a few years, he’s become one of the most fearsome media figures in the country—mobilizing his vast Twitter following to promote his famous friends and punish foes. Can his own past survive similar scrutiny?
By Peter Kiefer -June 9, 2021
I’m extremely upset.”
Yashar Ali delivers this news as he settles into a booth in the lobby of Santa Monica’s Proper Hotel. His eyes are red and puffy—he’s clearly been crying—and his voice cracks with emotion when he speaks. Something terrible has happened, the death of a beloved friend, and Ali can’t help but spill his grief into my tape recorder as we start our interview. “He was just so resilient,” he says, sighing deeply.
The deceased, it turns out, is an orphaned elephant named Luggard, who, before he succumbed to a deadly infection, lived in a wildlife refuge in Kenya that Ali has been raising money for through his extremely influential Twitter account. “You can get people to care about animals if you help them realize that they’re just like us,” he says.
To his 800,000 Twitter followers, Ali’s aching sentimentality won’t come as a complete surprise. They know that this 41-year-old scourge of the internet—the political-operative-turned-social-media-muckraker who took down Sharon Osbourne, hobbled the cabinet chances of L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti, canceled food writer Alison Roman, and helped crush Harvey Weinstein—is actually a big softy. At least when it comes to elephants. And orangutans. But when it comes to everybody else who ends up in his Twitter account’s sights—A-list celebrities, media bosses, and politicians (especially the ones he’s become intertwined with personally and financially)—he’s a force to be reckoned with, emerging over the last five years as one of the most feared and powerful voices on the web.
Part investigative journalist, part gossip columnist, and part trusted confidante, Ali is a uniquely twenty-first-century media personality—an openly gay Iranian American convert to Catholicism who claims he attends Mass three times a week. He sends out an average of 60 tweets a day—a manic jumble of jokes, news bites, and gossipy commentary about politics, media, aviation safety, the royal family, Scientology, gay heartthrobs, wildlife preservation, and bath linens.
https://www.lamag.com/mag-features/yashar-ali/
By Peter Kiefer -June 9, 2021
I’m extremely upset.”
Yashar Ali delivers this news as he settles into a booth in the lobby of Santa Monica’s Proper Hotel. His eyes are red and puffy—he’s clearly been crying—and his voice cracks with emotion when he speaks. Something terrible has happened, the death of a beloved friend, and Ali can’t help but spill his grief into my tape recorder as we start our interview. “He was just so resilient,” he says, sighing deeply.
The deceased, it turns out, is an orphaned elephant named Luggard, who, before he succumbed to a deadly infection, lived in a wildlife refuge in Kenya that Ali has been raising money for through his extremely influential Twitter account. “You can get people to care about animals if you help them realize that they’re just like us,” he says.
To his 800,000 Twitter followers, Ali’s aching sentimentality won’t come as a complete surprise. They know that this 41-year-old scourge of the internet—the political-operative-turned-social-media-muckraker who took down Sharon Osbourne, hobbled the cabinet chances of L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti, canceled food writer Alison Roman, and helped crush Harvey Weinstein—is actually a big softy. At least when it comes to elephants. And orangutans. But when it comes to everybody else who ends up in his Twitter account’s sights—A-list celebrities, media bosses, and politicians (especially the ones he’s become intertwined with personally and financially)—he’s a force to be reckoned with, emerging over the last five years as one of the most feared and powerful voices on the web.
Part investigative journalist, part gossip columnist, and part trusted confidante, Ali is a uniquely twenty-first-century media personality—an openly gay Iranian American convert to Catholicism who claims he attends Mass three times a week. He sends out an average of 60 tweets a day—a manic jumble of jokes, news bites, and gossipy commentary about politics, media, aviation safety, the royal family, Scientology, gay heartthrobs, wildlife preservation, and bath linens.
https://www.lamag.com/mag-features/yashar-ali/
1 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Because of him I discovered bucatini. I'd never heard of it before and it is really good. 
He sends out an average of 60 tweets a day—a manic jumble of jokes, news bites, and gossipy commentary about politics, media, aviation safety, the royal family, Scientology, gay heartthrobs, wildlife preservation, and bath linens.
Link to tweet
Link to tweet
