Be careful of the Big Bad Twitter Mythomaniac

I’d like to come back on a story you might have not hear about, as it concerned especially France and Great-Britain football medias. On the 10^th of March, the French satirical website cahiersdufootball.net published a hoax named “The Qatar creates the Dream Football League”. Even if it looks realistic at some points, many elements are absurd in it, and it is signed by the Agence Transe Presse (a fake Agence France Presse). Nothing abnormal, the website is used to this kind of article. But on the 12^th of March, the serious British newspaper The Times published a paper re-using some elements of the hoax, especially the image created on photoshop by cahiersdufootball to illustrate their article.

Very quickly, some readers of the French site reacted and interpellated the author of The Times’ paper via twitter. Oliver Kays, it’s his name, denied, and explained later on a chat that the story doesn’t come from the cahiersdufootball but from a very trustful source. Unfortunately, it was not at all. The source was Rob Beal, a twitter mythomaniac. This man from Sheffield , in England, tricked many people using socials networks, promising jobs, game tickets, and scoops. How come?

Writing your stories based on a twitter source?

Not always a good idea...

Who never accepts on facebook someone he doesn’t know as a friend? Internet breaks the borders and authorizes friendships between people who never saw each other. It is not necessarily bad, it’s even creating very interesting possibilities to meet folks all over the world thanks to one common passion, interests. Forums are a way like any others to be part of a strong community nowadays. Twitter allows people to express themselves like they never did before, and it has a lot of advantages. But when you let him go to the information area, the big bad twitter mythomaniac becomes a redoubtable credibility killer.

First, he will approach you quietly, hidden in the crowd of your followers. Then he will have a few exchanges in the usual way with you, showing that he knows quite a lot about your favorite subject. Maybe you will start to retweet him, as he posted some useful things. And when he will estimate that you are ready to be attack, he will send you some direct messages, saying that he gets something which could interest you. Why wouldn’t you trust him? Anyway, he is your twitter friend, another nice guy from socials networks. To be sure, he will precise for which company he’s working, and what are his references. And if you don’t do any research, you won’t know that this company doesn’t exist. You won’t know that behind the website, the facebook page, the different e-mail is only one guy, the big bad twitter mythomaniac.

The only know picture of Rob Beal.

It was apparently enough to trust him.

After finding the cahiersdufootball hoax, Rob Beal had taken out all the crazy details, and send the story to many British newspapers. Oliver Kay took it for something true, and soon it was all on his way. Hopefully, there are not so many twitter mythomaniac, but a lot of honest people, ready to investigate to reestablish the truth. The twitter community who had been interested by the story made an incredible work, that none of the journalist approached by the mythomaniac did before. The affair evolved quickly and permanently for two days, with more and more information coming up to the light via different socials networks, and small websites. Finally, the sources were concurring, and the real personality of Rob Beal has been brought right in the middle of the internet scene. From now on, Beal is wanted, and some justice procedures have been engaged against him. It might be the end of the big bad twitter mythomaniac... Unless he found a new way to escape and tries again to swindle people...

To summarize, what I’d like about this story is how it used many new medias. From photoshop to create the image to facebook for Kay’s apologizes, this went through forums, online newspapers, and of course twitter. Ironically, it was the good, serious and respectful old British newspaper that was trick in this affair. It shows how hard it is to control the new medias sphere, this world where people looks more trustful than in the reality.