I’ve had quite an interesting few days on Twitter. And I’ll be the first to admit I almost got Catfished (in case you’re not familiar with that term you need to read this blog and watch the movie!) Basically (according to the urban dictionary) a Catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they’re not, using Facebook or other social media to create false identities.
A few days ago I got a request from someone claiming to be Yaana Gupta‘s manager asking if I’d do a Twitter interview with her as she is based in the UK. I figured why not and went to scope out the Twitter handle @YaanaOfficial that she claimed to have newly set up because she had forgotten her gmail password. (Clearly she had gotten to a few other peeps in the media before me because my radio pal Anjaan from Josh FM in Dubai was following her. So I followed her too.) When I finally got to asking him about it he said “Helloooo I was meaning to ask you the same thing. She messaged me on Whatsapp yesterday from a London number but some things didn’t seem right.” I asked him if he had managed to speak to her and he said, “Nope she didn’t agree to be called. I just made a shout out saying new twitter account.”
Around the same time I got a Twitter DM from verified Rahul Mahajan asking me to confirm Yaana Gupta’s Twitter handle saying, “she gave me her London no on Whatsapp, she said she can’t call or text only Whatsapp.”
That’s when my alarm bells went off!
I asked her to call me to confirm the interview since I’ve met her a bunch of times before and think I’d be able to recognise her voice. She said she would but then her manager emailed saying, “I don’t know if she’ll be ready for a phone call yet as she’s had a cold and strange throat from recording, I’ll try to encourage her.”
Funnily enough later that night I got a Whatsapp message from a UK number claiming to be a Swedish model, Anna Nystrom “kinda connected to Bollywood.” Followed by an email from HER manager saying, “I’m the PR of Anna Nystrom, she’s soon debuting in Bollywood. She was going to star in indian reality show which got cancelled, Shah Rukh Khan has noticed her and spoke to us about maybe debuting her in his next film and loads of producers have emailed…” *….and yawn*
No surprise I’m sure but the UK number that texted me was the same number that was Whatsapping everybody else! Sneaky, but not terribly clever.
(Also not surprisingly that the fake Anna happens to have a Twitter account that Tweets the fake Yaana.)
Anyway, I’m over it, but I’m blogging this as a little heads up to everyone, before you start following someone who is unverified on Twitter (even if your friends are following them do your homework or you could end up getting Catfished – big time!)
There appears to be another @MissYaanaGupta on Twitter with a lot more followers, I’ve asked Bruna Abdullah (who follows her) to get me a confirmation from Daisy Shah (who knows her) that it’s really her and I’ll report back so hold on till then, ok?
*UPDATE so I’m guessing this one is fake too then. *sigh* Trollers, trollers everywhere.
*LOL* in hindsight this was all kinda of hilarious and Yaana Gupta eh? What a curious choice.