One of the most devilishly entertaining parts of Twitter are the fake sports insider accounts that are able to trick people into retweeting their fake news tweets. We’ve seen this happen almost too many times to count thanks to people like @AdarnSchefter (Adam spelled with an “rn”), @KenRosenthaI (Rosenthal spelled with an “i”), @UncleChaps, and many others.
Well, yesterday it was Adarn Schefter striking again with this tweet about Eli Manning asking for his release from the Giants organization. It got EVERYBODY. Look at this thing, almost 1800 retweets!
https://twitter.com/AdarnSchefter/status/935924691264471040
Thanks to our friend Fred Segal at Freezing Cold Takes who documented many of the individuals who fell for the fake tweet, from Peter King to Brian Billick to Trey Wingo.
ADARN Schefter with a midday “Eli Asks For Release” tweet that catches evening traction and snares a ton of prominent biters!
Special thanks Cold Take Nation for your hard work taking and sending me screenies! pic.twitter.com/jRaHTnY0Ee
— Freezing Cold Takes (@OldTakesExposed) November 30, 2017
The hilarious element of this story is that King seems to be particularly guilty of falling for these fake accounts.
Thank you. My fault. https://t.co/5h4nklL7y2
— Peter King (@peter_king) November 30, 2017
In fact, it’s the second time in the span of a month he’s fallen for one of these tweets. Last month it wasn’t even one of the good fake accounts, it was @AddamScheft3r that did it. That’s not even close! Here’s two more examples of the SI scribe getting duped.
Peter King falling for a fake account pic.twitter.com/RtIZeE9em2
— Mikelennial (@Mikelennial) October 31, 2017
There are a lot of accounts that try to do these fake tweets to troll legitimate reporters on Twitter but the Manning tweet was Grade A material. It has to be a big story that people will gravitate towards and contain believable breaking news in the fashion that the real reporter would send it in. Then once just one legitimate account grabs hold of it, the fake news can travel everywhere.
Trolls 1, Blue Checkmark Twitter 0.
