Today in Twitter theater we have the story of Dave Holmes, an LA based writer and comedian who received a scam call from someone pretending to be from the IRS. Since he was at the beginning of a commute, Dave decided to go along with the scheme.
Content warning: some language ahead is as shady as a scam call.
Yesterday, George Zimmerman announced that he would be auctioning off the infamous gun used in the killing of Trayvon Martin as "a piece of American history". It did not take long for that auction to get pulled but Zimmerman managed to find a different website to host his auction after all.
A troll on the internet wasted no time on vigilante justice though, going by the name of "Racist McShootface" and driving the price of the gun into the millions.
via @nrothers
Eventually the troll account was disabled but it was enough to inspire other trolls to carry on his good work. Reportedly, the fake bid made it up to around $65 million. It's unclear if the trolls will ultimately shut down the auction or if it will go to the highest legitimate bidder. The website it is hosted on has made it clear that they do not manage the auctions that users host on their site.
So far the seemingly most legitimate bidder is Brez Morrell according to Gawker, who bid up to $485,000 before "Racist McShootface" derailed the proceedings. Also of note, and not particularly surprising, Brez Morrell's response to trolls was to defend Zimmerman and tell trolls that he (or she) hopes their "children get murdered". Awesome.
An unknown prankster sent in the plot of a two-part Seinfeld episode to the advice columnist Amy Dickenson. The episode in question is called "The Boyfriend" and just as the prankster writes, it deals with Jerry meeting his sports idol who then goes on to date Elaine.
Amy answered as if it was any other question with a short paragraph that offers solid advice and would have probably cut the end of the episode very short.
She admits on her own website that she missed the joke but she seems pretty good humored about it:
Every once in awhile, I get punked by a villainous, fun-loving reader. I have some affection for these episodes because I often think that if I didn’t actually have a job, punking advice columnists is exactly what I would do with my time. But alas I do have a job and so I am left with the task of sharing my humiliation, as well as trying to enjoy readers’ reactions.
Here's the beginning of the episode in question:
Amidst the United Airlines controversy madness at least we have our ever devious Twitter Trolls to provide us comedic relief. This is definitely the first time I came across an airlines affiliated headline the last couple days not entirely related to bashing United, and phew, is it refreshing or what.
