What’s worse than a suicide hoax? A suicide marketing campaign.
Toronto police have determined that a series of tweets allegedly from a young girl threatening to kill herself was a hoax intending to promote a new album by pop star Ariana Grande, the Toronto Star reported.
Police spokesman Scott Mills said it isn’t clear who was behind the macabre promotion, but Grande likely wasn’t even aware it was going on. The account @ButerasCandiess posed as a down-and-out super-fan of the 20-year-old singer who was set on committing suicide by overdosing on prescription pills. The sad story prompted dozens of other “Arianators” to follow the account and tweet their support for the apparent troubled youth.
“This is a huge waste of our 911 dispatchers, our intelligence people, and our communications resources,” said Mills, who spent two days this week getting to the bottom of the sick stunt.
A Toronto nurse, Anne Marie Batten, told Mills about the account and the girl’s purported plight – messages like “I’ll take pills and I’ll kill myself.” Mills immediately saw it as a red flag and police began investigating.
It wasn’t long before officials started to have serious questions about the validity of the account, though. Twitter divulged that the tweeter was coming from a location in Greece when police asked, but it became clear that the IP address was a fake – in an effort to hide the user’s actual location. The account was likely based in the United States.
Plus, before the suicidal threats, the user’s tweets surrounded around getting others to follow her and doting messages about Grande, a star on Nickelodeon whose first album is set for release Sept. 3. The account’s bio reads: “always here for ariana, love her more than everything.”
Things heated up when the user suggested she would kill herself in three minutes, urging followers to make the hashtag #RIPbuterascandiess trend on Twitter. As soon as Toronto police outed the “girl,” the account tweeted: “It was a hoax! Sorry.”
Mills said if the person was Canadian, he or she could face public mischief charges.
“If people are crying wolf like this, people aren’t going to take it as seriously,” Mills said.
So why would anyone resort to such disgusting tactics to promote an album? Simple, according to Mills.
“It gets people to look at the Twitter feed, right?” he said.