Polygon Interview with Aaron Webber – Sonic’s Social Media Presence
Sonic has a social media presence and it has been felt strongly since Aaron Webber took control of it since 2014. The Blue Blur has had some great moments on Twitter and Polygon had the chance to talk to the man behind the blue hedgehog’s keyboard recently.
But some, like Webber, saw another side of Sonic emerge outside of his increasingly polarizing games. It was a Sonic who was more than just a character: He was an icon, ripe for lampooning. Making fun of Sonic and loving him didn’t have to be mutually exclusive, either. In fact, the grown-up die-hards were the ones most able to crack jokes about the transformations the hedgehog has undergone over the years.
That includes Webber — and he’s had the unique chance to bring lapsed fans back into the fray. Webber’s name isn’t just known to his fellow Sonic faithful: Under his care as a social media manager at Sega, the hedgehog’s online presence has become one of the strangest, funniest and best in the industry.
It’s all thanks to Webber’s management of the character’s Twitter account. As the brand’s social media manager, he’s developed the account into a mix of weird in-jokes, pop culture references and memes galore. Taking over the Hedgehog’s handle in the summer of 2015, Webber crafted an updated persona for Sonic. It’s now par for the course to see Sonic mocking other brands and his own history, or reveling in absurdity on social media.
You can find the full interview at the source link but I highly recommend giving it a read, considering it is very interesting learning about how Webber manages the iconic hedgehog’s social media.
Source: Polygon
Personal Highlight of Article to Me
Sonic’s followers flipped out as they watched their once-beloved mascot go in on one of the gaming media’s toughest, best-known figures. Webber not only clapped back, but threw in a reference to a story from almost five years earlier, when Sega made a goof after Sterling’s negative Colors review by sending him a giant poster of the game’s cover art.
“When Sonic Colors came out, everyone loved that game except Jim Sterling,” Webber told us. “He gave it a 4.5 [out of 10], which, incidentally, is about the same Metacritic [average rating] that Sonic ’06 had, which is pretty low.”
Sonic Colors was undeserving of the score, Webber thought; to him, it was one of the better Sonic games of late. Thus the friendly rivalry between Sonic’s public persona and Sterling was born, continuing throughout the summer, and Webber cited a later tweet among his all-time favorites. The Sonic account had tweeted an innocuous picture of Sonic and Tails, with the copy referring to them as “the flyest team around.”
Sterling jokingly called out Webber in response. “You told ME I was the flyest,”he wrote. “I feel betrayed.”
Somehow Webber, under the guise of Sonic, had developed a flirtatious rapport with one of gaming’s most vocal journalists. This wasn’t intimidating, nor did it seem to strike Webber as odd. It was all just a bit, but one that Webber was committed to.
“Jim Sterling sent some tweet out. I’m in a conference room in a meeting. … I see Jim Sterling’s tweet and I’m thinking, ‘What can I say back to him?’ The 4.5 thing crosses my mind and I think, ‘Oh, I know exactly what I’m gonna say.’”