Stuck Underground? You’re Going To Need A Good Laugh

For a moment, finding this twitter account made it all seem worth it.

The long nights anxiously waiting for a ghost train, the vomit-caked seats, the unexplained delays, the ‘showtime’s, the snail-slow service when the train finally does show up, the rat parades, the overcrowding, the aging infrastructure, the unintelligble announcements, and the fare hikes.

Or at least, it compressed all those moments into a collective inside joke.

While the MTA runs its own twitter alerts account under the not-quite-intuitively-named handle @NYCTSubway, one clever jokester grabbed @MTAServiceAlert as the “Official source for news and service change information for NYC MTA transit subway service. Monitored rarely and largely slow to respond, just like the C train.”

At first glance, MTAServiceAlerts looks legit — with official logos, slogans, and MTA formatted tweets. But then it takes that extra step beyond expectation.

While the other notable parody #FakeMTA account comes right out with it, this one makes readers do a double-take.

The account is ostensibly run by “Gil”, a middle-aged MTA social media manager who isn’t allowed to leave the tunnels and hasn’t seen his family in months (the person behind the character wanted to remain anonymous).

“I started the account because like so many people I started to feel like the MTA was just getting more expensive and miraculously worse over time, so the account kind of just dials that absurdity up a notch,” said the mystery person behind MTA Service Alerts.

And the best part? Gil responds to people who plead with the MTA on twitter, in real time, and confuses the hell out of everyone.

Take a few moments out of your day to peruse @MTAServiceAlert, it’s hilarious. It’s clever. There are narrative arcs, running jokes, and reoccurring characters. Check out some of our favorites below: