Hooped Up

LMAO! Fake Twitter Shaq found…ttyl 

“Shaquille O’Neal had a problem. An Internet impostor using his name was sending messages to unsuspecting Shaq fans. So O’Neal did what any sensible, 7-foot-1, muscle-bound mammoth would do. He started tweeting. The faux Shaqaccount was discovered last week by Sports Media Challenge, a consulting firm that works with O’Neal. Kathleen Hessert, the firm’s owner, was initially thrilled. She had been pushing O’Neal to Twitter with fans. She found the oddball references to the Pythagorean theorem and the Big Cactus to be veryShaq-like. “It was a very good impersonation,” Hessert said. A closer inspection revealed the forgery. The ersatz O’Neal, for example, claimed to be sending tweets from the bench during a game — a virtual impossibility. That was the point, said the man who created the account. Ward Andrews, the 33-year-old Suns fan behind ShaquilleONeal, said he included the occasional outlandish claim as a tip-off. “All the longtime followers, over 500 followers, they know it’s a joke,” said Andrews, who owns a Phoenix design and marketing agency. “I really didn’t have any intent to pull people’s leg. It was just to entertain.”

New York Times