While stock in the real Burlington Coat Factory plummets (15% below its October IPO pop) the popularity of the anonymous Twitter account @NotCoatFactory is on the rise. The latter is not affiliated in any way with the Burlington Coat Factory. No big brand–well, maybe Kenneth Cole–would risk tweeting odd messages like “We like our #coats like we like our coffee: warm and all over our body.” (102 of the account’s 14,030 followers favorited that one, and 116 retweeted it.) The tweets get messy too, often laden with typos and grammatical (intentional?) errors. There really doesn’t seem to be any purpose to the tweets. Like so much on the Internet, the prevailing reason seems to be “because we can.” To give another perspective on its nonsensical personality: @NotCoatFactory follows just a few accounts including Long John Silver’s, a Mel Gibson fansite, the real Danny Glover, and the White House.
Apparently there was an exchange between the real brand @Burlington and the fake. Tweeting temporarily stopped in October 2013 (coincidence?) and then resumed when @BurlCoatFactory (the original snark address) changed its account name to the present @NotCoatFactory, making explicit the separation. Most @NotCoatFactory followers think @Burlington should just get a #senseofhumor – it just might increase their following (currently 5,295) and stock price (BCF).
