Twitter Trolls Steal Chinese Football Fan’s Identity, Confuses the Internet With Viral Tweet

Twitter Trolls Steal Chinese Football Fan’s Identity, Confuses the Internet With Viral Tweet
Carl Samson
September 26, 2017
Some Twitter trolls who stole the identity of a Chinese football fan and claimed that he’s Korean caused an uproar on the social media platform last week.
It all started when Mark Noble, captain of the English football team West Ham United, posted a photo of himself with a fan on Twitter on September 21.
Noble captioned the photo with “All the way from China.”
The next day, a Twitter user who goes by the handle @KoreanHammer replied to Noble’s tweet, claiming that he was the fan and that he’s actually South Korean.
The reply got at least 1,600 retweets and 7,200 likes.
But two days later, another Twitter netizen who goes by the username @LingWann_ “stole” @KoreanHammer’s claim and quoted Noble’s original tweet in a new post.
This time, the post received at least 118,000 retweets and 265,000 likes.
It did not take long before others took notice of the unfounded claims and assumed that both must be trolls.
West Ham fans in China heard about the tweets and quickly shared them on Weibo.
It was then revealed that the fan was a 30-year-old Chinese man who lives in Shanghai, and goes by the handle @HammerStan on Weibo.
@HammerStan’s page is filled with photos of himself, apparently wearing the same jacket in London.
Outraged netizens then rallied and confronted @KoreanHammer and @LingWann_:
@HammerStan, who goes by @Pierrex523 on Twitter, replied to Noble himself:
He also shared more photos on his account:
Unfortunately, Noble apparently believed @KoreanHammer’s claim and responded with “I’m sorry! Love to all my South Korean fans!”
BuzzFeed News reported that the man behind @KoreanHammer is Baz Assemakis, a 17-year-old old from Norfolk, United Kingdom.
“I changed my name to a stereotypical South Korean name and changed my profile to pretend to be the man,” he told the outlet.
Assemakis, however, was infuriated that @LingWann_, who remains unidentified, got way more retweets and likes.
“At least I came up with the original ducking tweet,” he wrote in a reply.
It seems Noble hasn’t quite noticed the whole trolling yet. In any case, we hope that no troll ever gets a free ticket to his games.
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