Georgia football fans love following their favorite coaches and players on social media, but you have to be careful that someone isn’t trying to make a Manti Te’o out of you.
image – kissmybit.com
We live in a fun digital world where sports fans can follow their favorite team and players on social media. This is great for the fan who wants to know more about a player than his performance on the field. Fans can interact with players, or simply just read updates about what parts of their lives the players choose to share to the world.
The downside to this is the all-too-often used fake or parody accounts.
A great example is the recent fake Ramik Wilson account. Wilson did not have or want a twitter account, but due to so many fake accounts imitating him he had to make one just to inform others that the other accounts claiming to be him were in fact fake. How do you know which accounts are real and which ones are fake? As resident Dawn of the Dawg social media expert I am here to help you wade through the sea of pretenders.
With many pro sports athletes you will want to look for a blue check mark. This means twitter has verified the account belongs to the player or their publicist. With many college athletes this will not be the case as they usually are not verified until hitting the NFL. Just because they do not have a blue check mark does not mean they are fake, but it is the first thing I look at if I am verifying the validity of an account.
Check the interaction in tweets. In Ramik’s case he is tweeting with many of the Georgia players and they are responding back to him. This is a good sign that it is indeed him as fellow teammates tend to know their friend’s handles.
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Who follows them? If the official college and or team follows this player it is more than likely their real account.
Look for other accounts to be tied to the account. If the player has their instagram tied to the twitter account this is a good sign. Make sure they are posting pictures that are not just simply pictures that can be found on google images.
To clear things up in the case of Ramik Wilson it’s not very hard to figure out which account is real. Ramik himself posted a video on his account to be the end all on what his twitter handle is.
So if you are one of the 852 people following @RamikWilson please unfollow him and follow a real DGD @WilsonRamik.
Go Dawgs!