That time I accidentally tagged a fan account as the real celeb and they ran with it

Happened about 2 weeks ago. I was scrolling Instagram and saw this post that looked exactly like a post from a pretty big singer I follow. Did the whole comment thing, tagged my friend in it, the usual. Turned out the account was a fan edit page and the real celeb had never posted that photo. The fan account then started posting like they were the actual celeb for like 3 days straight and got like 20k new followers out of it. Felt so dumb when I realized. Has anyone else accidentally boosted a fake account like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

robinj291mo ago

oh man, I actually read something about this exact thing like a week ago. there was this whole article about how fan accounts are getting smarter with their photoshopping and some of them are basically running full time celebrity impersonation rings just to get brand deals and follower counts. it's wild how fast it blows up too, because once one person falls for it everyone else just piles on without checking. the real celeb probably had no idea until someone sent them a screenshot with a frantic "is this you?" message. I bet that fan account is still out there somewhere acting like they're the big star.

perry.evan1mo ago

Bro I did something even dumber last summer. I saw a meme page that was literally just reposting old interviews from a Marvel actor and I commented "OMG love your new movie!" before checking if it was the real account. The fan account changed their bio to say "actor, not a fan page" and started posting links to buy merch. They gained like 15k followers in a week and I got so many messages from people asking if I knew the actor personally. I still feel embarrassed thinking about it.