I’m all for people amusing themselves on social media during our new normal, quarantines and isolations. I’ve enjoyed looking at Quarantine Cats and Coronavirus Doggos too, and I continue to love how so many cats cannot handle the fact that their human friends are home all day, every day. What I don’t enjoy, however, is when the lunatics of QAnon make up a story about Oprah Winfrey being arrested for sex trafficking. WTF.
Media mogul Oprah Winfrey has debunked a conspiracy theory that she had been detained on sex trafficking charges and her home had been raided by police. A fake report went viral saying that she had been arrested at her home in Boca Raton, Florida, pushing her name to the top of Twitter’s trending topics for several hours on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
After the 66-year-old was informed she was the subject of the false reports, she used her verified Twitter account to refute the bogus claims.
“Just got a phone call that my name is trending. And being trolled for some awful FAKE thing. It’s NOT TRUE. Haven’t been raided, or arrested. Just sanitizing and self distancing with the rest of the world. Stay safe everybody,” she tweeted.
The false report was also accompanied by a video in which a purported news reporter said that her house had been cordoned off by authorities and was being excavated for underground tunnels. The fabricated report also implicated other celebrities such as Celine Dion, Madonna, Charles Barkley and Kevin Spacey. The Daily Mail and CNN reported that the bogus story had been started by the far-right group QAnon, which is known for spreading wild conspiracy theories.
So… I looked up some of the trending tweets and I am SO bothered. Like, the QAnon sh-t is just flat-out crazy, but it has such a Russian-bot edge to it, I can’t help but think that some of that stuff is being amplified by “pranksters.” But then there’s a whole other side to it – people who are still mad at Oprah for her work on telling the stories of Michael Jackson’s victims and R.Kelly’s victims. Those people want to destroy Oprah and call her a “sex trafficker” because… she thinks legitimate victims of abuse should be able to tell their stories. That bothers me a lot more.
Just got a phone call that my name is trending. And being trolled for some awful FAKE thing. It’s NOT TRUE. Haven’t been raided, or arrested. Just sanitizing and self distancing with the rest of the world. Stay safe everybody.🙏🏾
— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) March 18, 2020
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red and WENN.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZmb21maYF1e82olqioopa1oMPIp52rnamUxKK%2FvqemrZeRp7%2Bmv9Oem5ien6estLHXmKurmZabtqS3yKeemKyYlsG0q8CYqJqmn6OsrbXEaA%3D%3D