https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/michael-avenatti-is-texting-with-someone-named-maybe-brent-and-it-is-maybe-the-funniest-thing-hes-done-lately.html
It’s not particularly important what’s going on here; Avenatti is embroiled in a feud with President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, and it is a many-headed beast, also involving famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz and about a thousand other lawyers. What’s important for our purposes is that Avenatti is texting someone listed as “Maybe: Brent.” More like Maybe: the Most Unintentionally Funny Tweet of the Day on Michael’s Avenatti’s Already Frequently Unintentionally Funny Feed. Your honor, I call to the stand … Maybe Brent. An Un-I-Brent-ified Male. Definitely, Maybe Brent. Not Not Brent. Schrödinger’s Brent. (Until you open the box, he is both Brent and not Brent). “Here’s My Number, Call Me Maybe: Brent.” To Brent, Perchance to Dream. Brent! Well, maybe.
While I adore the notion that Avenatti entered someone in his contacts as “Maybe: Brent,” this is more likely the result of an iPhone A.I. feature that uses data from other apps on a phone to guess whom a number belongs to—if Avenatti has an email from Maybe Brent in which Maybe Brent lists his phone number, for instance, Avenatti’s phone may just be putting two and two together about the unknown number Avenatti is texting. Avenatti probably did not type “Maybe: Brent” into his contacts, but he sure did leave it there when it showed up, unbidden, and he did not care enough to update it before sharing it with the world: a total non-power-move power move. Even the timestamps are funny. One of the texts occurred at 1:42 a.m.—there is no rest for Michael Avenatti. #Basta!
In tweeting his text exchange with Maybe Brent, Avenatti follows in the long tradition of people who have accidentally revealed weird names for other people in their phone, like Kendrick Real—as Macklemore knows him—and Brittany Canada Whore—a number Lauren Conrad once found while thumbing through Brody Jenner’s phone on The Hills. He also adds to the internet folklore surrounding the name Brent. They’re good texts, Brent.