Woman Behind @CondeElevator Reveals Herself

Hot on the heels of @GSElevator being revealed as this gun-toting Texan, the woman behind @CondeElevator has also chosen to go public.

Former GQ writer Lauren Bans is responsible for amassing nearly 76,000 followers by Tweeting humorous things overheard in the Condé Nast elevators.

Here's a taste of some of her work:

Condé Nast is, of course, responsible for titles such as Vogue, The New Yorker, Glamour, Vanity Fair, W, Architectural Digest, Wired, and GQ, among many others.

But unlike the man behind @GSElevator, who never worked at Goldman Sachs, Bans was an associate editor at GQ when she started the account. [For the record, her parody account came before @GSElevator.]

Today, Bans - who is currently pursuing a career in TV writing in Los Angeles - told her former employer, GQ, how she became the mastermind behind the popular parody account.

I was at a bar after work with coworkers, and we were joking about something someone had overheard in the elvs that day. I think it was a lady seeing another lady's cup of carrot sticks, and saying so enthusiastically, "That looks delicious!" I've never been so psyched on carrots, or any raw vegetables, so it struck me as funny. I brought it up that night over drinks-like, wouldn't it be funny if there was a Twitter account for this? And I think I started it that night after work.

But she had no idea how popular and far-reaching the account would become.

"I just thought of it as an inside joke between coworkers," explains Bans. "I was really surprised when people from, like, Indonesia, started following the account."

Eventually, the account became so popular that media reporters started sniffing around and Bans soon quit Tweeting for fear of losing her job.

The last post on @CondeElevator is from August 2011.

RIP.

To read Bans' full interview about creating a viral Twitter account, read her interview here on GQ >