Michael Lohan is not one of our favourite people. He is the father of Lindsay Lohan by biology alone. At this point, not even strained Christmas reunions swapping badly wrapped socks could mend the father-daughter bond. Not that we care much mind you, but we’re all about calling a spade a spade.
This weekend there was a hoax to end all hoaxes. Well, perhaps that’s overstating. Okay, it is overstating. That implies the hoax was remotely convincing or well-executed and it wasn’t. At the least, it provided filler for bored bloggers on a slow news day.
The fake Twitter account @themichaellohan was used to send out a series of messages on Sunday. These tweets were written in a manner that you could imagine Michael speaking in person. Monosyllabic and constructed as though he had mashed his keyboard with his palms.
There were a few un-punctuated tweets sent over a few hours. These contained fake threats of suicidal thoughts and the threat of the act itself. In this year’s best example of wishful thinking gone awry, several large outlets including Gawker wrote about the fake goodbyes and threat to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.
There were a handful of clues that this all shouting, no substance Twitter account was fake. It’s generally never a good idea to report ‘fact’ from a brand new, unverified Twitter source. As it’s not a source. It’s a flippin’ waste of time – time that would be better spent nose picking or butt scratching. Seriously, bloomin’ hell.
It’s nothing short of amazing that so many people were taken in, hook line and sinker, by such a simple ruse. All it took was a few minutes and enough people who disliked the subject that no one questioned a suicide threat. Um, we don’t like him either, as he’s a tool. A real tool. A total, annoying tooly tool. But that doesn’t mean we’ll jump all over unverified panic-monger reports that he’s dead.
From Allie is Wired:
Michael let it all out via Twitter just a little bit ago, and it's not looking pretty. Oh, where to start?? He was widely criticized for releasing those recorded conversations, and it seems like everything is getting to him and he wants to end it all.
The Gawker report was updated, to say the account was bogus. They also have before and after pictures of tweets that were later deleted from the account. Gawker mentions one of the only outlets who cared enough about Michael’s whereabouts to do some digging, Shabooty.
From Shabooty:
@TheMichaelLohan is in fact an impostor. Here’s the email Lohan sent […]: This is not not not me. I do not have and never had a twitter and twitter’s corporate office confirms that. My lawyers are investigating.
This whole episode went toward proving several things. It’s bloody annoying to have to go back and hastily edit a high-profile post. It’s bloody annoying to find out hastily written posts from wobbly sources don’t stand up to scrutiny. Most importantly, the bloody Twitter account was bogus and so that means… we won’t say it – but you know where we’re headed.
This was a guest blog by Amy Grindhouse, who is ten kinds of awesome
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Jean says
You should be in jail Michael for betraying your daughter. Actually let me take that back. You don’t have a daughter after what you’ve done. A father doesn’t do that. You are a money making pig. Good luck in whatever greedy behavior you do.