It turns out a punk culture magazine founder turned college professor is behind a fake Twitter account that purported to be Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel.

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The doppelganger Emanuel composed almost 2,000 tweets in five months through the @MayorEmanuel address, attracting thousands more followers than Rahm Emanuel's real Twitter account, The Atlantic magazine reported.

Excited and easily entertained followers said the messages elevated Twitter from mere communication to literature and even former White House senior adviser David Axelrod, when asked if he missed the stream of communiques waxed in foul language that discontinued Thursday, said: "You're freakin' A right I do."

The real Rahm Emanuel offered to donate $5,000 to the faker's favorite charity (other than himself) if the culprit would show himself while the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune simply offered their begging as an incentive for the man behind the Twitter curtain to keep on keepin' on.

Back and forth it went in an e-mail negotiation between the tweeter and The Atlantic magazine until the author outed himself for no monetary compensation.

He is Dan Sinker, founder of Punk Planet, a Chicago-based magazine centering on punk culture published from 1994 to 2007, The Atlantic said.

Sinker said Punk was "about looking at the world around you and asking, 'Why are things as (expletive) up as they are?'" he wrote. "And then it's about looking inwards at yourself and asking, "Why aren't I doing anything about this?'"

After distribution problems ended Punk Planet, Sinker won a Knight Fellowship in Journalism at Stanford and eventually began teaching at Chicago's Columbia College.

"My wife has asked me, 'Why did you actually start tweeting?' And for the life of me I can't remember," Sinker said. "I remember I was at home. I think everyone had gone to bed. And I remembered, 'Oh, I have that account. This might be kind of funny.'"