Fake BP Gets More Followers Than the Real BP

May 25th, 2010. By AbiK

There’s something rather disturbing in this newsflash: the fake BP Twitter account has more followers than the real BP Twitter account. Yes, 18,149 more followers to be precise as of my writing this.

And with tweets like…

The ocean looks just a bit slimmer today. Dressing it in black really did the trick! #bpcares

and…

Oh man, this whole time we’ve been trying to stop SEAWATER from gushing into our OIL. Stupid Terry was holding the diagram upside down.

it’s pretty clear that the fake tweets are not the official BP tweets, though it’s also clear that folks are finding the fakes to be more engaging—and dare I say more humorous if you can find humor in such a disaster—than the reality. After all, the reality of the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf is a bit too much to take—it’s day #36, there hasn’t been much progress with the clean-up and the damage continues to grow.

I’m all for humor and sarcasm as a means to put more focus on an issue—or even just to let off some steam. But @BPGlobalPR went a bit too far at one point with this tweet:

@willarkatone – It’s not our oil, it’s America’s oil! In the meantime, if you’d like to donate to help us clean up go to www.bp.org

There are folks out there who genuinely want to help and who would make a donation to do so. Posting a bogus url is just irresponsible. But—NOT posting the fact that the proceeds from the t-shirts you’re peddling are going to healthygulf.org is just stupid. I’m just amazed that the authors of the BPGlobalPR Twitter stream see fit to hide behind a bogus bio (“This page exists to get BP’s message and mission statement out into the twitterverse!”) and then, when they have the opportunity to rally some support for the cause vs. merely just coughing up some sarcasm, they drop the ball—they hype the t-shirts but not the cause! Go figure. And, while I’m at it, partnering with Amazon or another established online etail op (cafepress, zazzle…) may have given their t-shirt transactions a bit more street cred than the streetgiant site they’ve got…just my two cents.

Tags: BP, BP Oil Spill, Twitter

This was posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Environment . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.