Birdie or Albert Haley

http://thevanwinkleproject.blogspot.com/2011/09/news-of-lowercase-m-e.html

The secretive nature of Birdie’s identity builds another layer of mystery throughout Birdie’s Blog. Birdie conducted an absurd experiment based off of Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle”. Birdie takes this seemingly fictional story and turns it into reality. In Irving’s short story, Rip Van Winkle finds himself drinking too much alcohol and fading away into a 20 year snooze. After waking up, Rip is surprised by everything that had changed, after all it was 20 years. Birdie, an online blogger, conducted an experiment in which he cut himself off from all information pertaining to his present time. This made Birdie totally oblivious to current issues and news. From the moment he cut himself off from the world to the day he “returned”, birdie’s identity was kept a secret. A couple days after “waking up”, birdie exposes his identity. In the blog post above, he gives an in depth life summary along with news about what he was presently doing. Keeping his identity a secret not only depersonalized the blog, but it also kept readers interested. The mystery of who Birdie really was captured readers attention. This specific blog post was a “historic” moment in the whole blog. Seeing that Birdie was an ordinary local college professor connected the occult blogger with many of his readers. This moment symbolized the era of Birdie “being awake”.