Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=604100000 Matt Fisher

    Seems like a lot of trouble, actually taking a class, just to prank some kids.

    • LinkMan

      I’m guessing he’s enrolled in college after finishing his army service and his college requires all students to take Speech 101.  

      • Sparg

        I figured he’d end his presentation by crediting the class with helping him lose his “accent”.

  • nixiebunny

    He’s very good at the Mexican accent. Almost too good.

  • http://twitter.com/fractos Adam Christie

    I posit that he does in fact have an American accent.

    • greebo

      No, no! Xeni assures us he has a “shocking lack of accent”. Any American accent you can hear is merely your unpatriotic ears deceiving you.

      • Antinous / Moderator

        In American English, we do have an accent that’s considered accentless.

        • greebo

          For fun, I think you should go and make that assertion in a crowded English pub. Hilarity will certainly ensue.

          • Antinous / Moderator

            It’s an accentless American accent. Not sure what part of that is hard to understand.

          • That_Anonymous_Coward

            There is a cockney accent joke just waiting to get me banned….

    • puppybeard

       You forget that on the internet, a white american lad is the type-specimen for homo sapiens. Everything else is a deviation.

  • Bodhipaksa

    Reminds me of the character Arastoo Vaziri in “Bones,” who had a Middle-eastern accent for several seasons, only to reveal that he’d been faking it so that people wouldn’t find it odd that he was a devout Muslim. It was a bit of a weird premise, but a nice fake-out.

    • http://profiles.google.com/loosexleaves Ashley Coats

      I also thought of Arastoo! I laughed my butt off when he tried to go back into the middle-eastern accent like he hadn’t just yelled with an American accent. Ha.

  • anansi133

    The web is like X-ray spectacles for (some) bigotry.

  • jccalhoun

    As someone who has taught Public Speaking I am very curious to know what his teacher thought about it.

  • http://mysite.verizon.net/~vze2tmhh/ pduggie

    Was there a point?

    • Boundegar

      Pro-level trolling.

      • Kelly M

        Weak trolling, if anything.
        This is more like the blase feeling I would get watching the theater majors preen for attention during lunchtime.  As a prank, its only mildly amusing, esp given the time that went into it.In the end I’m left with that this guy is one 1000s of people who can fake an accent.  He just bothered with if for a longer period of time to gather some nonplussed responses on his phone camera.  /yawn”Hey I faked a Mexican accent for a few months”  Pro level?  Hardly.

        • Boundegar

          Well some very sophisticated people are very hard to impress.  Rubes like me think he rocks.

  • Sigmund_Jung

    Well played, sir.

    But… he spent 4 months without actually making any friends — and the one he made was still dupped. Now I understand why people call Facebook “social”.

  • http://www.mynameisjay.com/ Jay

    I watched the whole thing waiting for the point of all of it.. some kind of cultural tolerance message, or something?.. but.. nothing. Just trollin for 4 months. Love it.

  • TheMudshark

    Vay vould you not haff David Hasselhoff als your idol, vay would it be a gifaway?!?

  • http://twitter.com/WpgCameraMan Rock Hardwood

    Moar of lady in green plz.

  • Repurposed

    I used to do a similar troll, but it was actually more of a jerkish reflex.

    People will occasionally speak very slowly and loudly to me (I’m Asian) before I’ve so much as opened my mouth. Every now and then I’ll play along for a while then switch back to my Australian-accented English. The thing is, often when I don’t play along, someone will say ‘You speak good English for an Asian’ or some like phrase.

    You might think, ‘hilarious!’ but really, when someone’s first reaction is to stereotype you, you see the impact everywhere from your career to who will stand next to you on the train.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_RREC2OY32JFN6JWSK4KZNBZF7Y Jim

    Where’d he go to school?

  • Petzl

    Why doesn’t he also affect a limp and a stutter?
    Then he can be the Mexican Keyser Soze.