(Just messin’ around. Of course Hemant can remove this any time he wants. I’m an impostor.)

Richard Wade

How do we know the Richard Dawkins replying here isn’t an imposter?

I confirmed it with him via email.

it is becoming relatively common to impersonate celebrities online. You have identified two possible reasons (malice, or humour), but there is also a simple third one which is admiration. For those who live rich digital lives not finding their heroes participate online with the same intensity is a letdown, and some of these people can be brought to fill this void. The dullness you perceive comes from their eventual lack of inventiveness, or creativity. It is unavoidable of course, since your value is in your uniqueness, and if it were easy to be you, than its value would be lowered.

The evolution of online behaviour is of fundamental importance for our memetic–or temetic/artemic as Susan Blackmore would more recently say–future, and being able and correctly interpret it is of substantial value.

Hope this helps, but let me know if it worth to expand further
(For example an other service becoming popular called FriendFeed encourages the creation of fake friends, which are the aggregation of online traces of people you want to follow, as if it were them collecting these…)

David
davidorban.com
linkedin, skype, sl, etc.: davidorban

PS: Of course the comment posted might or might not come from the ‘real’ Richard Dawkins, too!

Ironically, he also attracted lots of people to other atheist twitterers by subscribing himself to them in order to appear credible. This included my Atheist Quote of The Day Twitter service I’ll shamelessly plug here whilst I have the opportunity