There have been many cases of fake social media posts fooling sports media personalities, athletes, and fans. Generally, though, the fake account in question has had a similar account name to an actual reporter, or has pretended to be a local reporter, and doesn’t have a very obvious “parody” in its bio (at least not until after the fake post starts to take off).
That’s not what happened with a X (formerly Twitter) post from @Derrico_Henrio, whose bio is “PARODY ACCOUNT – TCU Grad – Former Meteorologist – Pulitzer Prize Winner – Lawyer – Tax Fraud Enthusiast – Sports Nut – Actor – NOT AFFILIATED WITH CBS SPORTS,” but who changed a display name and image to look like CBS Sports’ college football account Friday and put out a post about a supposed sports betting scandal at Baylor (which did not happen):
That was quickly referenced as obvious satire by many, including CBS Sports’ Shehan Jeyarajah:
However, the post picked up a ton of views (more than one million as of 1 p.m. ET Saturday), and a lot of quote tweets taking it seriously from some prominent people. And many of those were still up more than 12 hours later with no follow-ups, including one from Jason Whitlock:
Leave a Reply