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Twitter isn’t real life, they say. But for Blazers fans, it’s often hard to tell the difference.
“Our Twitter community is so close,” says Alex Haigh. “Everyone hangs out outside of it. I know so many people who’ve met their best friends through it.”
In April 2018, Haigh and four other hardcore Blazer fans—Nila Madison, Anna Downing, Rachelle Nilo and Gracey Altree—decided to pull that community together under a single banner. They called it Rip Twitty (@RipTwitty).
To a certain degree, it’s a fan account like most others—a repository for memes, musings and the occasional date proposal. (“Sources: @GraceyBeans in talks with Hassan Whiteside’s camp to acquire him as her new boyfriend,” read a Tweet sent the day the team traded for the former Miami Heat center.)
Sources: @GraceyBeans in talks with Hassan Whiteside’s camp to acquire him as her new boyfriend. This would give Gracey the height and muscular definition she lost in Moe Harkless. pic.twitter.com/NWYlOl8gCJ
— RIP TWITTY™ (@RIPTWITTY) July 1, 2019
But in the past few months, Rip Twitty has been making moves in the offline world. The crew has hosted increasingly popular game-watching parties around town, where it’s raised money for charity. The group was also recently invited by the front office to take part in a roundtable about the in-game experience. Through her friendship with sideline reporter Brooke Olzendam, Haigh got a gig co-hosting Blazers Outsiders on NBC Sports Northwest.
But Haigh insists this isn’t necessarily about building their own brand, but propping up the Blazers fan base as a whole—a group united in self-deprecating humor, and bouts of unreasonable positivity.
“We’re really just representing what’s already there,” Haigh says. “We just gave it a name—and a Twitter account.”
