Billionaire Magazine's Twitter account is hilarious, but it probably doesn't mean to be

The Billionaire Magazine is not a very good magazine. Its twitter account @BillionMagazine, however, is a diamond in a sea of garbage.

@BillionMagazine, which boasts over 250,000 followers on Twitter, combines inspirational quotes with images of luxury. Once in a while one of its tweets will approach something like coherence; much of the time, it quotes historical figures like Benjamin Franklin and Pablo Picasso and attaches a photo of a yacht.

The results are hilarious. When Bertolt Brecht wrote that “Intelligence is not to make no mistakes. But quickly to see how to make them good,” he was probably not imaging the sentence as advice to aspirational entrepreneurs. Nor could he possibly imagine his writing would eventually be accompanied by a luxury car and small aircraft.

If the Billionaire Magazine Twitter account didn’t exist, some artful botmaker would have to invent it. It still might, of course, be performance art, and not the spammy, click-hungry site it appears. As it stands, @BillionMagazine’s tweets are being sent from someone’s iPhone, so it looks as though they’re being thoughtfully constructed by a human being.

This is my personal favorite.

But perhaps you’re more of a Henry David Thoreau fan.

Thoreau, like many of the people quoted on the account, makes multiple appearances.

Ben Franklin also has some advice for all the (aspirational) billionaires out there:

(Especially when those doors lead to a private jet.)

And of course let’s not forget one of the most important billionaires of all time, Gautama Buddha:

If you make the (ill-advised) decision to visit its website, you will almost certainly be confused, and then disappointed. The Billionaire Magazine is a pretty standard advertising meets inspirational pablum scheme. It describes itself as “the world’s most exclusive magazine,” which means that it’s a series of haphazardly put together sections (e.g. Cars, Yachting, Travel, London, Fashion). Most of these sections feature words scraped in whole or part from press releases and dubiously credible blog posts elsewhere online. The homepage is littered with brief bios of various billionaires.

It’s been around since mid-2012, when it sprang into the world, cold and desperate to be covered in diamonds and gold filigree. It’s ownership, “Billionaire Plc,” is mysterious, and the website links out to a number of other Billionaire branded pages. [UPDATE: We’ve been in touch with Billionaire Plc’s CEO, see below.]

If you haven’t made your billions yet, don’t worry, The Billionaire Magazine has you covered. They also operate Billionaire University, an equally iffy site that is “the world’s most unique wealth creation business school.” And don’t worry, the Billionaire University has a Twitter account to help soothe you, too:

There is very little that’s more calming than scrolling through these feeds. Just sit back and enjoy the meditative experience of scanning the incoherent slurry of text and images. Some days, you’ve just gotta sit back and laugh. That’s the good stuff.

UPDATE: The mystery of Billionaire Plc is (partially) solved. The company’s CEO, Lawrence Colbert, spoke to me on the phone, and expressed disappointment in this article, but said that he and the others at Billionaire Plc “have broad shoulders, we can take being the butt of jokes.” Colbert explained that he runs @BillionMagazine himself, as well as twelve other accounts that include his own, @RussianWealth, and @ArabWealthMag.

Colbert is an American living in England, and his Twitter bio describes him as an “Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Sales Trainer, Military Veteran. Billionaire Plc CEO.” He told me on the phone that he served in the Air Force, and that he still works for the U.S. Government, but that he’s “not at liberty to discuss that in great detail.”

Colbert also emphasized that he is not a billionaire, and that he and his colleagues are “quite simple, ordinary people,” adding, “I wish we were more than that so that perhaps your criticisms could be justified.” He told me that a print edition of The Billionaire Magazine would be available later this year in the United Kingdom.

Asked about his tweets, he said “The point behind the tweets is simply to offer inspiration. most people simply take them as that.”

Ethan Chiel is a reporter for Fusion, writing mostly about the internet and technology. You can (and should) email him at [email protected]