“I said a lot of stupid shit. I would base my comedy off of a lot of unpopular opinions. They didn’t understand I was a character then,” he says about the offending Miss Prada tweets. “According to them I’m a racist, I’m transphobic, I don’t like Beyoncé, I hate Rihanna, I support women-beaters, literally anything you could think of. I get called names because I say ‘nigga.’ People are like, ‘You’re not black, you can’t say that.’ In order for me to say I’m black, I have to say I have [adoption] papers.” He pauses to slurp some noodles into his mouth. “It’s irritating to kind of have to prove myself sometimes. It’s really aggravating. Some of my tweets are really sick, but I play a sick character. I don’t really want to explain myself and give them that satisfaction.”

I ask him if he thinks Joanne is a good person. Scamming and identity theft are real crimes that negatively affect people all over the world every day — violations that wreck lives, not just credit scores. “No, I don’t,” he says without pause. “I do think she has good intentions. She’s here to make you laugh. That’s why I get so upset. My intention isn’t to hurt anybody.”

In a bizarre turning of the tables, Branden was the victim of a scam in May of this year, when a person posing as a Twitter employee swindled him out of his account information by promising to get him verified. “I thought it was sick, hilarious,” he says of the ordeal, throughout which he never broke character. “I’m busy with wine forgery right now babe. Can we chat later?” he wrote in one email to the real-life scammer, who demanded $500 in ransom. Branden never paid, and though all of his tweets were deleted, he laughs about it now. In the end Twitter verified his account.

The internet’s a fickle place, and web-based fame is just as fleeting as any other kind. After Branden’s old idol Chris Crocker saw his notoriety dwindle, he made porn. “When they’re living for you, they’re really living for you — it’s like you’re walking on air,” Crocker tells me later, over the phone from Tennessee. “The thing is, there will be a point when people turn on you. It’s just the way the internet is.” He says he’s a big fan of Joanne the Scammer, and thinks Branden has a better chance to have a lasting career than he ever did. “Branden’s going to make mistakes — we all do,” Crocker says. “But how he feels about himself and his work can’t come from public responses. If it’s self-fulfilling, that’s how he’ll keep creating.”

Branden’s tweets are more popular than ever right now, but like they say, nothing gold can stay. This doesn’t seem to bother Branden — Joanne might crave fame and fortune, but he’s just trying to live comfortably. He’d like to parlay his internet celebrity into a role in a movie or a book deal, whatever will get him enough money to buy a modest house in Florida and never have to work for someone else. So far, he’s been paid to record personal greetings as Joanne, collected $10,000 to appear in a makeover video with viral hairstylist Anthony Cuts, and signed a three-video deal with Super Deluxe, a web production company and distribution network. The first will be a parody of MTV Cribs starring Joanne and a “borrowed” L.A. mansion.