The Fake Reality

Hey everyone,

Increasing our digital literacy and indulging into troll accounts has made me think to myself that it is truly crazy the extent that some people will go just to anonymously spread false information. As a teacher, there are endless ways to create connections and relationships with students, however the two that are most personable to myself are through sports and the outdoors in general. That is why I have chosen to use this post to discuss sports and how some athletes find it necessary to create burner accounts.

Burner accounts are typically made when an athlete is frustrated with their role on the team or the media for making direct, inappropriate comments about their character. Some well known athletes such as Kevin Durant, Antonio Brown and Dez Bryant have all been speculated and later caught using a burner account. Typically, a burner account can be easily identified as it typically has little no to follower credentials and strictly posts about one topic, team or player in general.

In Dez Bryant’s case, he tweeted in his original account stating “The problem was my teammates respected me more than the coaches” as seen below.

He then retweeted this with his original account again saying “I can see that.” Which lead a lot of people to believe that this was meant to be a burner account backing up his stance. Although you can’t confirm by this situation whether or not he meant to, it is very suspicious.

However, in some instances, it is relatively easy to pick out when it is a troll account. Sticking with the sports theme, for those who have heard of Sportscenter, there is a known twitter account as seen below:

As one can see in the username, this one identifies itself as “FakeSportscenter”. In some cases, it is extremely difficult to tell though. We saw this in the examples provided in class. 

Burner and troll accounts should never be used regardless of the situation as typically, they turn into harm for some individual. Whether it be the person using them, while typing behind the screen anonymously, or the person they are directing their comments at.