A decade in the past, not lengthy after the decline of Ashton Kutcher’s supremacy on Twitter, within the days when the @horse_ebooks account was making the idea of “Bizarre Twitter” mainstream, an enigmatic character quietly surfaced.

However there’s way more to this man than espresso, and if his most up-to-date actions are any indication, his tragic, ten-year story arc could lastly be approaching its climax — or maybe a brand new starting.

The account often called “espresso dad,” with the deal with @coffee_dad, is “only a dad who loves his espresso,” in keeping with his bio. Espresso dad virtually solely posts transient, low-key updates about his current standing vis-a-vis his favourite scorching drink. The updates are usually nothing greater than sentence fragments about acquiring, making, or consuming espresso. Posts is perhaps “want espresso,” “time for espresso,” or simply “espresso.”

Espresso dad would possibly often appear unusually keyed up or overcaffeinated simply because he, say, posted “MAKING COFFEE” in all caps, however hey, you may chalk that as much as him being a middle-aged dad, and doubtless not nice at utilizing Twitter, not any kind of deeper pathology…proper?

Don’t be so positive. Once in a while, when his followers least count on it, espresso dad takes a break from sipping espresso to drop hints about his intense wrestle with highly effective and extended grief over the premature lack of his son. “Please go away me alone in the present day. It is a very tough day for our household. Considering of you at all times my son,” he tweeted in 2013. Over time the uncommon mentions of espresso dad’s son grew to become an increasing number of elaborate. 

Months could go with nothing however espresso tweets, after which espresso dad will submit one thing like this:

Apparently, the son died in some kind of motorcycle-related occasion, and the dad feels a minimum of partly accountable. These blink-and-you-miss-them outbursts of ache aren’t humorous. They’re extra cathartic, they usually give the “regular” espresso tweets a tragic subtext. The expertise of following a grieving dad for years and years makes his followers admire the depth of his love, and it’s laborious to not root for him to discover a path out of his despair. 

However there have lengthy been indications that this story was not headed towards a cheerful ending. Tweets like 2017’s “It’s time for them to pay for what they’ve executed,” counsel that espresso dad holds some unknown group — bikers? — answerable for his son’s dying, and these individuals have cause to worry espresso dad’s righteous anger.

Lots of espresso dad’s non-coffee tweets have steered that the dad’s quest for retribution has already begun. However one posted on Sunday, July 17 — a date established again within the account’s first yr because the son’s birthday — hints at a finality that has by no means been current in a espresso dad tweet earlier than:

I’ll allow you to tease out the that means of this one, however it’s clear to me that espresso dad’s enemies aren’t the one ones at risk now. I doubt that is the tip of espresso dad, however he’s clearly crossing a threshold, and the following time he posts about needing espresso, I’ll surprise if it’s as a result of he’s in a spot the place there’s none to drink.