Botspotting: @ParkerTamlin and @BrantleyLeSoy
On Sunday night, June 16, 2019, the following screenshot of a tweet from account @ParkerTamlin was circulated via two separate meme pages on Facebook.
Kimberly Parker Tamlin-Vesper is not a real person.
This “Angry” “feminist” “nonbinary” “Anti Vax” “mom of 2 transgender toddler boys, Rikerson and Hedgewick” is a fabrication, the perfect profile combining multiple outrage-inducing political topics into one suspiciously fantastic person — which again, doesn’t actually exist.
These outrage buzzwords are used to drive views. The messages are spread memetically, through screenshots, to other social networks, where viewers are less likely to have the tools available to verify the authenticity of the origin account themselves. The messages come from enjoyable meme pages, often spreading in a peer-to-peer fashion. Most followers of meme pages find them familiar, and viewers of these images are less averse to rejecting the message from a happy source. This pattern of distribution allows for information to be spread to a wide audience, much like a news organization, however it simply lacks the fact checking found in journalistic environments. The peer-to-peer nature of memetic distribution lacks the traceability of a blog, social media account, or website, allowing for reach while concealing the paper trail of authorship and spread.
@ParkerTamlin’s profile picture appears on a clickbait blog about “beautiful pictures of septum piercings” from 2013.
@ParkerTamlin’s cover photo appears in the Daily Mail, multiple Metro.co.uk articles and on /r/MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), and incel Reddit forum.
@ParkerTamlin also follows only 7 accounts, and was created in June 2019 — less than two weeks ago from the date of writing this blog post.
@ParkerTamlin also follows similar Twitter account @BrantleyLesoy — notice how both accounts are for “commentary only” in their bio’s.
Update 6/17: @ParkerTamlin has a new profile picture.. from the Internet:
These accounts most likely will be gone in two weeks, like @AlwaysNazis — another Twitter profile which made the rounds memetically. This account has since been suspended.
Monday Night, 6/17 Edit: Both accounts, @ParkerTamlin, and @BrantleyLesoy have been suspended on Twitter.
Archive.org link of @ParkerTamlin: https://web.archive.org/web/20190617053231/http:/twitter.com/parkertamlin
Archive.org link of @BrantleyLesoy:
Double Edit: This post/thread from 4Chan on June 15th is supposedly the inspiration for these accounts.
