Jack West, a Fraud Analyst from Valparaiso just outside Chicago, posted a tweet about mortgaging his parents house to buy stock shares, which was a joke.
Jack said: “I usually just tweet random stuff I would find funny, like the idea of taking out a second mortgage on my parents house to buy a volatile stock fueled by hype and not value. I lie in my tweets all the time as a joke, kind of like it’s my brand.”
Then New York Post real estate reporter dm’d jack following his tweet, with queries on how he felt about mortgaging his parents’ house to buy GameStop stock shares.
Jack engaged and the story appeared on the New York Post and was quickly picked up by Fox News.
The story quickly unraveled and the reporter contacted Jack again before taking to Twitter to address the situation.
Jack shared his own tweet captioned ‘a timeline of events’, showing exactly what had happened.
The tweet went viral with 25,000 retweets and hundreds of comments, many congratulating the 22-year-old and calling him a ‘hero’.
It wasn’t just the New York Post; Jack tells me he’s been contacted by around 20 news organisations and reporters so far.
“I have a call with ABC at 1pm today (not sure if they know it’s fake yet), had a previous call with Fox News to be on ‘America Reports’. I’m on a small podcast tonight as well. It’s been fun.”
Jack said: “I genuinely feel bad for her as most people are ripping on her. I absolutely hate the NYP for their contact slander of random people and attention, lie-grabbing headlines. So when I saw she was from the NYP, I had to keep it going.”
Both articles have now being removed but there are screenshots across social media.
Featured image credit: New York Post
Film Media and Journalism student at the University of Stirling. Editor in Chief at Brig Newspaper. Edinburgh / Stirling
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