The weekend Twitter users wanted to believe they could get rich
IF you weren’t wired thousands of dollars this weekend, it’s probably because you didn’t ask a teen who said she was giving away a fortune to anyone who wanted it.
If you weren’t wired thousands of dollars this weekend, it’s probably because you didn’t ask a Twitter teen who said he or she was giving away a fortune to whomever wanted it. Or, it’s because everyone was faking it.
Yesterday, Twitter was dominated by @princessthot, who claimed to be a teenage girl looking to send $1,000 from her dad’s $23 million Paypal account to the first 10,000 people to retweet this tweet.
First 10k people to retweet get 1k each, fuck my dad and his manufacturing company. pic.twitter.com/LBA0AL52aJ
Later, after saying that her mentions had essentially crashed, the growing horde was directed to use the hashtag #AskHannaForCash. Though one would obviously assume this was a flagrant hoax, @princessthot kept up the ruse, and eventually began retweeting people claiming they had received cash.
OMFG @princessthot SENT ME 1K TO MY PAYPAL I CAN'T DEAL RN. SPENDIN IT ALL ON CLOTHES, MAKEUP AND MARIJUANA ASDFGH I thHOUGHT IT WAS FAKE ð¹
OMGGG ð§ I can't believe @princessthot just sent me 5k am I dreaming?? Thank you so much omg!!!! â¤ï¸
This is my paypal account right now due to Hanna #AskHannaForCash pic.twitter.com/ERvKur2uNk
Be patient, this shit takes a while. pic.twitter.com/f9W1u68YHC
Et cetera. This is all pretty stupid, but @princessthot, like the kid who tried to have sex with a Hot Pocket, became a fleetingly galvanising figure because of the nonchalant sense of humour she had about her destruction.
Obama doesn't do enough for the people, I mean wow there are so many poor people out there! I am glad to be helping.
haha people want me for president, i'm like 16. But when I grow up! Believe me I will become the first female president! #FuckObama
Late in the night, she claimed that the police stormed her home and arrested her father, which is pretty much when the entire game obviously fell apart, and that was before Daily Dot dug up evidence that seems to confirm our obvious suspicions about the veracity of @princessthot.
Still, as a disposable spectacle, the saga of @princessthot was fun. For better or worse, these are the types of events that Twitter thrives on: a growing number of users chatting at or across each other about a certain event that an even larger number of users probably aren’t even following. When we don’t have the Academy Awards on, we invent something like this.
@princessthot was a copycat, in any event. On Friday, a kid named Andrew Kuczynski said he would be giving away part of a fortune he won in the Powerball. He posted this screencap as proof, though if you read the first letter of each name from top to bottom, it spells out “I LOVE KRISTINA.”
Over half of it given away ! Keep RTing & following • https://t.co/0Ph8Cs9GBV pic.twitter.com/RQI7hQ2hgy
The weekend was also the logical evolution of Esurance’s $1.5 million Twitter giveaway during the night of the Super Bowl. Still, @princessthot’s stunt was the most magnetic yet, and another reminder that the fastest-spreading news stories don’t necessarily need the press, as Buzzfeed’s Hunter Schwarz found out.
@hunterschwarz I don't talk to the press, BLOCKED!
This story originally appeared on Gawker.