How to spot FAKE social media accounts made by Reality Stars

Previous houseguests have been accused of creating FAKE Instagram and Twitter accounts so that they can defend negative comments about themselves without getting in even more social media trouble. On the last season of Big Brother US a constant trending hash tag was #RavenExposedParty. This hash tag was devoted to outing all the lies that houseguest Raven Walton was saying on the show, these lies included her and her mom both being in mensa, a list of up to 70 health problems, and a plethora of false information about one disease she has in particular – Gastro Paresis. After leaving the house, Raven turned off all of the comment options on her Instagram because she knew that anything she posted would be used as a platform by the viewers to continue the #RavenExposedParty. Yes, some of these comments were mean, but a majority of the comments from the viewers were asking Raven to either explain or own up to the lies she said on the show. I have followed multiple houseguests outside of their seasons and I have to say that Raven has experienced the worst backlash from the audience that I have ever seen. I completely understand why she would not allow commenting on her Instagram posts once she left the house. However, yesterday Raven posted a photo on Instagram and opened up the comments, this was very interesting because it was the first time that she was interacting directly with viewers of the show. All of a sudden, anyone who commented about anything negative – even if they were just asking a question about something she said, another group of people would start bashing that person. When taking a look at these people and their accounts, it was obvious that a majority of them were fake. The running theory is that Raven, her boyfriend Matt, Raven’s mom, and some more of her family members spent the last month creating fake online profiles so when Raven finally did open up comments, they would be ready to defend her behind the mask of a fake account. Although it is almost impossible to find out who created these fake accounts without spending hours looking at log in times and content, there are a few quick ways you can tell if a social media account is fake. The first, most obvious, way to tell is by looking at their followers and posts. If someone has no followers and 0-2 posts (and is most likely on private mode) it is pretty safe to say that the profile is fake. If someone is confortable finding someone they know on social media and yelling at multiple people in the comments, they should be confortable enough to be an active member of social media and with no posts or followers, they clearly are not. The second way that fake accounts try to look like real accounts is by following upwards of 1000 people and only having less then 100 followers in return. Many accounts are follow for follow, meaning that if you follow them, they will follow you back. Someone who is trying to make a fake account may turn to these types of followers to make their account look more real. The third way to see if an account is fake is by looking at the handle and the profile picture. In Ravens case, multiple of the fake account had the word ‘puppet’ in it or it was a mix of different letters all starting with ‘D’. The profile photos are also a huge clue, normally fake profiles will have a profile picture with no face or person in them. It may be a picture of flowers, a dog, or a scenery and sometimes there is no profile picture at all!

Raven is not the first reality star to do this, and she will not be the last. Some people may not care if someone wants to spend hours of their time logging in and out of multiple accounts to comment on their own Instagram accounts and that is totally fair. The reason why I am bothered by it is because a lot of the time the people who do this are the ones who have the most answers to give their audience and instead of facing the people they subjected themselves to, they are calling them names from the safety of a fake account. I hope that if more people are able to spot these fake accounts, it will become harder for people to get away with them.

So what can you do if you spot a fake profile that is being used to attack others online? I simply report the comments as Spam/Scam on Instagram. When this happens you can expect one of two things to happen. The first and most likely is that the comment will disappear and you will never hear anything about it again. The second is that you will receive a message from Instagram saying that they looked into the comment and the profile and comment meet the guidelines of Instagram so it will stay posted. If this happens, that means that you may have reported a real profiles comment. I also always like to reply to one or two fake profile’s comments saying that I am aware that they are fake. This allows other people reading through the comments to know that they shouldn’t believe everything they are reading.

Social media is so important to reality stars, without it, most of them would just fade away with the old seasons of whatever show they were on. I love to keep up with my favourites that I have watched on TV, but I also think it is important to check in on the people I didn’t like and sometimes you find things like this. It’s disappointing and I don’t think I could personally be a fan of someone who uses this tactic to communicate with others.