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Andrew Wiggins, fake Twitter, and the World Wide Web we weave

Posted by on Sep 19, 2012 03:27

I love Twitter. I was a late convert, but once I got started I saw how good it could be. There's instant connection just about anytime you want, and since I'm a sports junkie it's basically a virtual gathering of fans of whatever event I happen to be watching. You can have conversations. You can have side conversations. Or you can just spend your time making wisecracks and hoping that they get re-tweeted to a wider audience.

But Twitter – like everything else – exists in the real world. Which means that people use it do deceive other people. The latest is the fake Andrew Wiggins account which mysteriously outed itself about an hour after I published this story about the user of the fake account promoting a knock-off sock company.

One thing I hadn't mentioned in any of the stories I wrote about the fake account was it's bizarre admiration for another Twitter account – this one called TwitterAsshole (*Note that the fake Andrew Wiggins account has chaged it's username now to a fan page – for an image of what it looked like earlier tonight, click the link above).

 

Regardless, after I published the story and it began to be widely circulated, I received a tweet:

So, like he requested, I DM'd him. Unfortunately I cannot embed DMs (Direct Messages) – or if I can, someone please tell me how – but we had a long conversation in which he let me know who he thought was behind the fake account. Who that was isn't important – but what is important is that while we were talking I took the time to peruse his timeline. And, oddly enough, a few things jumped out. First, he had been promoting the fake account for Wiggins' (fake) best friend – Xavier Rathan-Mayes (which I covered here).

And he was also promoting the TwitterAsshole account.

 

The end result was that a couple hours after I published the most recent story, the fake Andrew Wiggins copped:

I asked the owner of the TWITTERFAMOUS account  (<—- that's who he claimed to be) if he had any comments before I ran this story. Here's what he said: "I know Wiggins personally and have no reason to steal followers from him. But hey, whatever you wanna believe is cool with me. The 10 people that read your blog may think I am the owner but I know the actual user anyways. He goes to my school, good friend of mine. Funny that you think you know the story when in reality it's crazy how much you don't know. Good luck with your story. Because I can tell you now you know nothing. I wouldn't tell on the person. Say it was me. It's good for your story and good for my attention."

And then this:

Now why would his "friend' say it was him? I guess that's good for his attention as well.

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