HACKED! A good Twitter account goes bad
“Unfortunately, like most good things, Twitter has a dark side. Some people, mostly those who are insufferable in person, use it as a place to troll, annoy, scam and artificially inflate their own sense of significance. “
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I love Twitter. It is simply the best tool available for mass communication – especially amongst like-minded sports enthusiasts. During live game broadcasts Twitter is a place where folks can cheer together, jeer together and make each other laugh. The 1,500 or so people whose commentaries fill my time line keep me informed, amused and “in the loop”. I get my sports news more quickly via Twitter than I can anywhere else.
I have even made friends through Twitter. Real ones, who I have met in person and learned that I enjoy spending time with. The South Stands Denver Fantasy Football League (SSDFFL) was formed almost entirely through Twitter. The service has allowed me invite such people as Tom Nalen, Peter Burns, Dmac, Tom Helmer, Cecil Lammey, Robin Carlin and Lindsay Jones Paul to be guests on the South Stands Denver Fancast. I have used it to expand my reach as a “blogger” immensely.
Unfortunately, like most good things, Twitter has a dark side. Some people, mostly those who are insufferable in person, use it as a place to troll, annoy, scam and artificially inflate their own sense of significance. Some users even go online to purchase fake followers with actual money because their accounts don’t grow as rapidly as they would like them to.
Dino Costa, a former Denver area sports radio talk show host and complete waste of DNA, is one of these people.
A quick audit of Costa’s follower count, which is over 40,0000, reveals that less than 10% are legitimate. Roughly 3,500 living, breathing human beings keep tabs on him. The rest are robots – created by nerds, given names and profile blurbs like “The more you invest in a marriage, the more valuable it becomes” and sold for a typical price of $.03 apiece to losers like Dino Costa. He believes that people will see his follower account and assume that he’s super famous. That’s why I called his cheating ass out. Costa is a fraud.
The internet provides tools with which to analyze a user’s Twitter followers for authenticity. I have never been afraid to use those tools when I suspect some douchebag of being pathetic enough to buy fake followers. I have busted a few people this way. It’s sport for me. Drew Soicher is my favorite follower buyer because he has an actual media job. My least favorite is Costa, who is a celebrity only in his own mind. He presumably babbles somewhere on satellite radio but I have never heard his show. Most people haven’t.
Last week I Tweeted an image of an audit I ran on Costa’s Twitter account, revealing his massive load of bought followers. His reaction has been to have whomever he buys followers from hack my Twitter account by inundating it with follows. Over the past few days my count has jumped from just over 2,400 to 5,337. My follower account is now over 50% fake.
You would think that, with NFL teams now in camp, that Costa would have better things to do than pick on a blogger. He is, after all, supposed to be a giant media personality. My doings should bounce right off of such a prominent star. But apparently I am more highly regarded than I thought. I must be important for Costa to have directed his resources toward me. Maybe I should be flattered, but I am not. I’m pissed off.
Unlike Costa, I worked for my real followers. I watched my count grow slowly and organically over the past couple of years. I try to be worth following. I make my observations and crack wise hoping that people will recommend my account to others. Now I am stuck with thousands of fakes and I don’t know what to do. Manually blocking each fake account for spam would take days. I don’t have the time to sit there clicking my mouse endlessly like that. I’m fearful that if I use a “scrubber” type tool online that I will lose some of my original followers.
This situation isn’t sitting well with me at all. The worst part is that I know Costa is down at Dove Valley as I type this. I could go down there and slash his tires if I wanted to, but I take the guy for the litigious type. Most trolling douchnozzles like him are. They can dish it out but they can’t take it.
I don’t understand why the Broncos PR department sees any value in allowing Costa down there with the legitimate media. But, since he is taking space there, I have gotten a couple of pictures of the poseur text messaged to me this morning. Hopefully the assembled media is whispering “did you hear what that guy did?”
If anyone happens to have any advice on how to remove fake followers from my account without losing legitimate ones, please drop me an email at denvercitydenver@gmail.com. And if anyone happens to speak to Costa at Dove Valley today, tell him to go make love to himself. He won’t mind. He probably masturbates to a mirror anyway.
