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The checkmark gave it a look of legitimacy, but it’s a popular Twitter account associated with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy. “Path” and “There is no country for old people,” His manager went on to say on Monday that it wasn’t fake without confirmation.
Bill, @CormacMcCrthyhas gained more than 49,000 followers since it was created in September 2018 by someone pretending to be Mr. McCarthy, a storyteller known to dislike computers.
The voice on Twitter was unfamiliar to fans of Mr McCarthy’s prose, which is often known for its intense and at times sadistic narratives that pit good against evil.
The tweets were brooding about things like kombucha, TikTok, and Disney+, and garnered tens of thousands of retweets and likes for their funny and grumpy tones.
The tone was out of character for Mr. McCarthy, whose books are often framed by the theme of death and gritty imagery, from venomous rattlesnakes in the Mojave Desert to a psychopathic killer whose chief execution method is a bolt gun used to cut cattle.
He set the scene while writing about a mercenary unit sitting around a fire in the “Blood Meridian” in the southwest:
“The flames and embers cut in the wind faded and deepened and faded and deepened, as the blood rush of a living thing took up space before them, and they followed the fire, which contained something of the people in it, because they were less helpless.
Posting on TwitterStill, it seemed like a chore for the person pretending to be Mr. McCarthy.
Stephen King he joked a little with the author of the tweetsChosen 88-year-old Mr McCarthy as a social media newbie trying to please a frequently mentioned publisher named Terry.
“My publisher is dealing with my case regarding my infrequent use of this evil website,” the person writing on Friday said, drawing widespread attention to the account. “He says engagement is down and there’s also metrics and something that cares I wrote a tweet there Are you happy now Terry.”
Mr King gave his consent two days later. “I don’t know if Terry is, but I am,” he wrote.
Paul Bogaards, spokesman for Mr McCarthy’s publisher, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, said on Monday the account was fake.
“We are in the process of alerting our colleagues on Twitter,” he said. “Clearly, verification processes are not bulletproof.”
“This is definitely not Cormac,” added Amanda Urban, Mr. McCarthy’s manager.
A representative from Twitter said on Monday that “the account referenced was mistakenly verified and has since been reversed”.
By Monday afternoon, the white checkmark on a blue badge—the designation of verified accounts used by celebrities, writers, politicians, and journalists—was removed.
It was unclear how long the account had been verified. Twitter did not respond to questions about how the error occurred. Going forward, the company said it will require the account to comply with its policy that parody or fan accounts have tags.
Twitter once chose accounts of famous people for verification. Checkmarks have become a sort of status symbol on the social media platform and aim to distinguish celebrities from impersonators. Users can now apply for account verification.
This wasn’t the first fuss about Mr McCarthy’s social media footprint or lack thereof.
in 2012 Atlantic Ocean An unpublished writer from Scotland reported impersonating Mr McCarthy on Twitter, catching the attention of novelist Margaret Atwood and Twitter founder and current CEO Jack Dorsey before the fake account was suspended.
Then Mr Dorsey welcomed the account and boasted, “We have the best writers in the world.”
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