I really hate parody accounts on Twitter.

If you have dedicated your free time to pretending to being Wiz Khalifa or Will Ferrell and trying to think of pseudo-inspirational or unfunny quotes, I’m really not sure we can be friends.

There are hundreds, probably thousands of parody Twitter accounts that litter this great social media website, many of them using the same recycled, rehashed jokes over and over again, yet still get hundreds of retweets.

It’s dumb, and quite frankly, if you retweet one, I’m probably unfollowing you, unless it’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day, which is unlikely.

The other day I somehow stumbled upon the Twitter account @RetardedCoach.

This account profiles the character of a coach who makes some questionable strategic plans and makes some dull observations about sports.

The account has 12,786 followers off of a mere 32 tweets.

The profile picture for this twitter account is the mugshot of Eastern’s own Jay Spoonhour, the new head men’s basketball coach.

This kind of puzzled me.

Why Jay? What has he done to already establish himself as the face of a perceived to be mentally challenged coach? Nothing. Not a damn thing. The man hasn’t even coached a game yet.

There’s something about Eastern basketball that the Twitterverse just doesn’t like.

First we were all hashtagging Mike Miller’s job away, now our new coach, who has an 0-0 record at this school, by the way, is the face of a Twitter parody account (probably the worst thing you could ever be on the Internet).

I emailed whoever runs @RetardedCoach and simply asked, why Jay? I got no response.

I really hope it isn’t an Eastern student that runs this because first of all, c’mon, man. Give Jay a shot here.

And second of all, the “jokes” sound like they were written by a 12 year old.

Tweets like, “I like to run the same play the whole game, even if it’s not working.” Hilarious. Not.

That tweet, by the way, was retweeted 138 times.

Why it was, I’m really not sure. It’s just another mystery, right up there with why Spoonhour has to be associated with this.

Being an Eastern basketball coach isn’t an easy job.

You’ve got to recruit some kids to come to a school in what isn’t exactly “basketball country” to play in a conference that some are saying might get a few teams in the NCAA tournament in a couple years.

So, let’s see what Jay can do first before we jump all over him. And let’s stop making parody Twitter accounts.

Dominic Renzetti can be reached at 581-2812 or dcrenzetti@eiu.edu.