FAKE Followers, REAL Consequences; Prominent Film Critic Suspended For Buying Fake Twitter Followers

It’s fake follower SZN!

Every few years we go through this, people waking up to the fact that many, many, MANY accounts out there buy fake followers. This time around, the New York Times of course stirred the pot with this long, detailed piece. People are buzzing.

Now, everybody is scurrying over to Twitter Audit attempting to DRAGGGGG people they don’t like. Britt McHenry got hit this week, so Big Cat had her on Evening Yak to tell her side.

This phenomenon made its way through Barstool a few years ago; it all went down in the summer of ’06 during the famous Nate At Nite/Smitty Periscope Battles.

This morning, even Cousin Mike floated the idea that we should reinvest Mike & The Murrdog t-shirt money to buy somewhere between 10 and 15 followers.

Then, this afternoon a prominent film critic was suspended for it.

It’s some pretty ironic shit, people buying Twitter followers to appear more credible and influential, ipso facto showing they are actually disingenuous and therefore lack credibility. Now, I’m not saying anybody that’s ever bought some followers is not credible, but I do think we’re reaching an interesting point when the Chicago Sun starts suspending prominent employees for buying followers. They’re making a statement and taking a stand, saying that buying FAKE followers warrants REAL professional consequences (I understand how corny writing the FAKE vs REAL thing is that I’m doing but I just can’t help myself; I have to do it).

The point is, we’ve seen this wave of awareness of accounts garnering massive followings with HUGE NUMBERS of fake followers come crashing through several times with no real consequences.

It will be very interesting to see if, this time around — with the NY Times piece making more of a journalistic splash on the issue than ever before and now this suspension — if we see more real, consequential fallout for folks who’ve bought fake followers.